


Liberare

by wolf_shadoe



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-03-07 19:49:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18880039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolf_shadoe/pseuds/wolf_shadoe
Summary: a.k.a. Bihaldan #2. A ghost story.





	1. Returning

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently my brain wasn't done with this. And some people said they wanted more, so here it is! Hope it pleases 💙  
> Betaed by the fantastic and amazing Micrindle23 💙  
> Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

 

 

** x **

 

She nodded off not long after they hit the open road, and he had to keep snatching looks at her in this new context of ‘sleeping in the passenger seat’. Nine days in, and there were so many untold wondrous things she could do now. When she woke up a couple of hours later it became ‘fiddling with the stereo’, and this he liked less, and told her so.

They stopped in Nashville again, staying in the same motel in the same room; yet everything was different. He felt like they'd stepped out of a mirror and found the world had changed along a different path than their own; their journey to that mirror-door a peculiar dream, with its only lasting effects these subtle but momentous shifts in psyche and subconsciousness. 

They were quieter together now, wordless as they unpacked what they needed for the day, but it was a quiet born of understanding rather than veils. 

 

The next night took them home to New Orleans, where they unlocked the door to their room to find it, too, different - and yet not. 

She paced around the place, touching things and straightening them, then grabbed a bag of chips from the cupboard and came to sit cross-legged on the bed with him. “Not sure I want to move,” she said. 

He shrugged. “No rush. We'd better sort the computer thing soonish though, if we've now got the whole state to take care of and reports to send.”

“Yeah.” She frowned. 

“Friday tomorrow. Shops open late.” 

The frown dissolved into a relieved smile;  _ alone  _ would not have to enter their vocabulary yet. She opened the chips and moved down the itinerary. “Where should we start with the investigatey thing? There's so much here.”

Since first coming here they'd studiously avoided getting involved, being noticed. But awareness had still slipped in on both sides in this town full of both blatant advertisement and shadowy crannies. The undercurrent of mystical energy that seemed to flow and drift down the streets at night had been what first drew them to stay in their search for answers, but they'd been afraid to step out into it while she was equally intangible. Now, it was time to introduce themselves. 

“What are we expected to do, exactly?” he asked. Doorknock like religious zealots? -  _ have you thought of signing on to The Council of Slayers? They offer great insurance packages!  _

She shrugged. “Meet people. And demons- not that demons aren't people too- urgh, I'm going to need to write a script. Anyway, you know, make friends. Find out who the players are around here, and how they might be able to help each other. Them and the Council, I mean.” She flapped a hand breezily.  _ It'll be easy. _

“Some of these people are dangerous,” he warned. “Humans, specifically, round these parts.”

“Always are,” she sighed. “So, perhaps we start with the surface stuff…” She sat up straight. “Ooh, can we go on the haunted house tour?” 

He looked at her disbelievingly. “You want to start our corporeal investigations at the ghost house?”

“Yep.”

Had to begin somewhere, he supposed. And nothing showed confidence like taking your ex-ghost partner to a supposedly haunted house full of mystics. “Alright. It's a date.”

Her face took on an endearingly shy smile before she pouted down at the jeans/t-shirt combo Fred had procured for her. “I need something better to wear…” She looked like she'd drifted off into realisation of all the ritualistic items she was missing from her ‘date’ scenario, her mood dropping with it. 

Christ, why’d he have to go and call it that. Were they ready for this? He wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of that thought after all they'd done, but that'd hardly go over well right now. She still looked so girlishly worried about measuring up to the concept, as there was any way she could ever fail him. Infuriate, certainly, but never disappoint. 

“You know you don't need a thing to look perfect to me, luv,” he told her, “but we'll go shopping, okay? See if we can't find something tasty for you to wear under that enticingly rumpled shirt.”

“Okay.” And she smiled again. 

Maybe it wasn't going to be so difficult after all.

  
  


** + **

 

She'd bought herself a couple of skirts, makeup and heels and ruffley girlie shirts. Now that she stood here trying to choose what to put on for their haunted house work/date combo… everything looked too foreign. She held both of the skirts up again to consider.

“Just stay in your jeans, Slayer,” Spike said from where he lay on the bed waiting. 

“But it's a date. You said.”  _ And I want to look nice for you.  _ They'd done everything  _ but  _ date, back to front and upside down; this time around she was determined to do right by him. New body, new beginning, all that jazz; not to write over the old, but to turn a new page. 

“And? That's what you were wearing when I asked you on it, weren't you?” 

He had that frustrating look of deliberate obtuseness on his face again. She held the skirts up for him. “Black or lavender?” 

“White.”

She looked at the lavender one as if it might suddenly turn white. Then back to him. 

“With the pink flowers,” he added.

Ah. The lingerie. They'd bought that too. She shook the skirts towards him and growled out, “Choose. One.”

He chuckled. “I have. White.”

Maybe he hated them both. Maybe she should have bought the barbie-bot-pink one that would have made her look all Sandra Dee. Maybe he should bloody well tell her which one he preferred so she could put it on and they could go. She frowned at him more. He crossed his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. She waited stubbornly. 

Finally, she put the black skirt down and unzipped the lavender one. 

“Don't, Buffy,” he said softly. She froze, and he rolled off the bed and to his feet before her. “It's obvious you're not gonna be comfortable in it today.”

“I wanted-”

“Got the message, luv. Appreciate the sentiment, okay?” He looked into her eyes in that way he had, and she saw that he did. “Now, not saying I wouldn't like to watch you move in either of those scraps of fabric, cause you know I would, but you look right fetching next to me in denim, too. Coupley.” 

Had Spike just suggested they should look  _ coupley? _ He continued before she could form a statement on that. “...But it ain’t about that. Wear a bleeding potato sack if that's what feels right. You're not my paper doll, real girl.”

She looked at the lavender skirt and suddenly felt ridiculous for letting this Date thing obscure everything she knew in her bones. Chucking it aside, she put on clean jeans and a plain cotton t-shirt, a smear of strawberry lip gloss and a dusting of eyeliner. And the white lingerie. Then she turned to find him sifting slowly through his box of clothes with a hint of guilt on his face. 

“Sorry,” he said sadly, looking down at yet another black top, “shoulda bought a decent shirt or summat… got you some flowers.”

Warmth blossomed up in her chest and she felt herself smiling. “And a hip flask of JD? Come on, silly.” She jerked the shirt from his hand so she could wind her fingers through his instead. “Don't get  _ shirty _ . Let's go do the having of the fun now.”

He flicked his eyes heavenward at her choice of language, but there was a smile in them now too. He lifted her hand and kissed the back of it quickly, then led her out the door. 

  
  


The ghost house was a gothic revival mansion on its own block, high stone walls bordering the streets on all sides with only the turreted roof visible above them. They paused to read the sign next to the wrought iron gates - Tenshaw House, 1852, Tours 5 pm & 10 pm Daily - then stepped through onto the pebbled driveway. As they did so something prickled at her senses, and she cast an anxious look at Spike to find him doing the same to her. 

“Feels like a barrier,” he said, “something to keep the ghosties in, perhaps.”

“Or out,” she added, thinking of the anti-vampired vampiric supplies store. She stepped back through the gateway and onto the edge of the street, senses feeling out this time as the prickly-curtain seemed to pass right through her. 

Right, so they could leave through it. Not that she'd been worried or anything. Not like Spike, standing next to her with relief-face. They walked in again, and up towards the house.

  
  


** x **

 

The open front door provided no barrier; he'd not thought the place would qualify as a private home, but you never knew. Especially with that curtain over the boundary. They entered to a small foyer, all wood panelling and nineteenth-century class, lit by weak electric lamps and flickering taper candles on side tables and a large desk at the far end. A girl behind the desk asked if they were here for the tour or a reading from the mystic on duty, and after he'd paid for two tour tickets she directed him to a door on the left - Waiting Room. 

The house had a strange feel to it, indecipherable but persistent beneath the layers of incense and candlelight. He couldn’t make up his mind which sense was detecting it; it was just sort of there somewhere, brushing on the border of notice. As they entered the waiting room the incense in the air increased tenfold, and he realised it had an unusual scent of its own. He parted his lips and inhaled slowly, letting the taste roll across his tongue. Well buried in the sandalwood and clove lay something sickening and off-smelling, like old milk and rotted vegetables - datura. No doubt there to dull and confuse the senses of visitors, lend a note of hallucinogenic paranoia to their observations. Couldn't be good for the staff. Though it had been much weaker in the entry foyer, what with the fresh air coming in the open door.

There were four other people waiting quietly in plush chairs; an older couple with their heads together over a brochure, and two young boys that he realised with a start were probably around Buffy’s age but looked impossibly juvenile put next to her steady poise. Before she could move to sit he brushed his finger across the back of her hand in caution and shifted his feet slightly. 

She flicked her gaze around the room before landing it on the couple's brochure for a beat, then turned to him. “We should have bought the information guide,” she said perkily, all eager tourist and bubbly airheadedness. “Can we go get one, please?”

He nodded agreement with an indulgent smile that wasn’t entirely false, and they left the room again.

At the entry desk she purchased her own information guide, then opened out the folding map on one of the side tables and started reading features off to him. Desk-girl looked caught between pleasing the customers and reminding them of the instructions; he gave her an apologetic but helpless look and she returned to her computer screen. 

“ _ What's up?” _ Buffy murmured between facts about the building. 

He put his head next to hers and filled her in on the doped incense, and part of her finely tuned anticipation fell away to a furrowed brow and sidelong look of,  _ really?  _

“ _ I was ready to slap the old guy to see what sort of demon he is,”  _ she whispered grumpily. “ _ Do you think that's what makes it haunted?” _

“ _ Probably.” _ He read out the tagline under the map's title, “New Orleans’ Most Terrifying Haunted House.”

She indicated the waiting room with her eyes. “ _ They safe?” _

_ “Should be. Didn't think they would be with a paranoid slayer aboard.” _

“I can't wait to see everything,” she said louder. Desk-girl looked ready to try and appeal to them to move, so Buffy asked her, “Do  _ you  _ think all the stories are true? Do people see things?”

She smiled knowingly. “Of course. I see the way some of them are when they leave. And no one ever comes back for a second look.”

“And you?” Buffy asked.

“I don't go upstairs,” she said with a grin.

There was a turning of gears in a nearby clock, then it began to chime the hour, matched by several others in the distance. Desk-girl sat back in her chair as the noise filled the room, and then a door behind her opened and a woman wearing a Tour Guide badge stepped out. 

  
  
  
  



	2. Ghosthunting

 

 

** + **

 

There were long halls and tall portraits, dark corners and flickering bulbs. The six of them were led through the second floor as their guide pointed out elements of architecture and design, original features and restoration work -  _ ‘funded through these tours, so thank you all very much for coming’. _ The boys looked rambunctiously bored and snickered together at the back; the older couple seemed like they could spend hours studying the carpentry on a single door frame. 

When they reached a flight of stairs at the far corner of the floor, their guide stopped and checked her watch before taking a handful of glow sticks from her pocket. “This is as far as the official tour goes,” she told them all. “However, we do encourage visitors to continue upstairs if they wish. The clocks are about to-” she paused as the chiming started throughout the building, and waited out the eleven beats before starting again. “Please ensure to make your way back downstairs when they next strike the hour; there’s an extra fee if a staff member has to come looking for you. Also, things tend to become unpleasant after midnight.” She held up the glow sticks. “If the lights fail - they're rather prone to it, I'm afraid - these will do the job.” 

The boys ignored the offer and took off up the stairs, and the tour guide sighed like a long-suffering parent before turning to answer a question from the older couple. Buffy turned to Spike with a challenging look, then accepted one of the glow sticks and slipped it into her pocket next to her stake. He waved off his own stick and followed her upstairs.

After the simple open layout below, this level seemed impossibly maze-like, all narrow corridors and twisting corners, doorways of different sizes and further sets of stairs. They didn’t see any sign of the others from their party, but the sound of running feet drifted from the distance occasionally. At a particularly loud thud, she paused and lifted her eyebrows at Spike. “Do you think,” she said, “that’s our errant young people, or a staff member trying to ensure we have a spooky time?” She tilted her head with a sudden thought. “Actually… we’d better be careful. Question first/hit later if anyone jumps out and says ‘ _ boo!’ _ . I do  _ not  _ want to have to explain that we’ve knocked out desk-girl’s teeth.”

“Got it,” he grinned. “But we come across anyone else in the dark, I reserve the right to flash a bit of fang at them.” He looked positively gleeful at the prospect.

“Maybe they’ll hire you,” she said, and skipped off to see what the next door held.

They found a library full of classic literature on dark shelves, its desk displaying dip pens and old-fashioned parchment. A few names were scribbled on the top page, attempts at jagged tags marred by splotches of ink. 

“‘ _ Libby’s a ho’,” _ she read out from one edge. 

“Good for her,” Spike smirked. He picked up one of the pens and ran it down an edge to clean it, then uncapped the inkwell and dipped it in. In clean precise lines, he wrote diagonally across the middle of the page in his elegant looping cursive:  _ Buffy & Spike were here. _

She rolled her eyes at him, and wished she could keep it. 

They carried on and found bedrooms; tiny ones with low ceilings, big ones with four-poster beds surrounded by lacey canopies. She stroked a silk dress on display, a china cat, a velvet coverlet; imagined living here when the home was new, then recoiled from the thought of the restriction and isolation. But still stroked the silky fabric once more to take with her.

The next door opened to a vast room with ornate chandeliers hung down the middle;  _ ballroom,  _ she recalled from the map. The floor gleamed like liquid in the dim light of a lamp by the door, enticing her out into the middle of the room before Spike flicked a switch and the chandeliers began to glow and sparkle. The room looked even bigger now - endless - and she realised the walls were lined with mirror, turning it into a never-ending reflection of itself. And her, standing alone in the middle of it as she felt Spike approach behind her. He brushed his fingers down her arm and slipped them into her hand, and all she could see was a hundred images of herself holding hands with empty air. She turned to look at him, but in the corners of her vision all the Buffys turned too, and she faced her distant self again behind his shoulder, and again behind her. 

She felt her pulse accelerating as she stared down the phantasms. Blinking, she tried to boot her rational brain into the driving seat again, but the other Buffys looked so lost out there that she couldn't make herself look away.

“ _ Settle,” _ Spike whispered, leaning to her ear. “Just illusion, ain't it? Close your eyes.”

She did, swallowing, and the room shrank back to normally-large size. And she wasn't alone in it. She exhaled, relieved, and felt silly. 

Incense. She could blame it on the incense. 

“Dance with me,” Spike murmured. 

“We'll break stuff,” she argued, imagining those dainty little side tables crunching beneath the impact of whomever went flying first. Also, they were wood, and therefore not a safe object to play near to.

Spike chuckled, rich and warm. “Not like that, Slayer.  _ Dance  _ with me. Ballroom, ain't it? It's what you do on dates, I gather.”

Could she? She'd caught herself tapping her fingers, heel, to the stereo a few times, but hadn't tested her new/returned body for matching the rhythm with fuller movement. Fighting was easier now though, things flowing through steps with a steadiness she hadn't realised was missing so badly before. “There's no music,” she said. 

She felt the muscles shift in his hand as he looked around the room, then twitch as he perked. “Stay right there,” he told her, then dropped her hand and moved off towards one wall. 

She listened closely as he flicked a couple of switches, then a soft crackle began to play. He waited motionless as it gave way to some sort of instrumental music, then the volume increased slightly and he skipped back over to take her hand again. 

“Should we be-” she began.

“Don’t be a spoilsport,” he told her. “No more excuses, pet. Dance with me.”

The music was lame-o, but she silenced her objections and soon it picked up the tempo and almost developed a proper beat. With Spike's hands resting on her hips and eyes still shut she moved to it sinuously, and found that yes, she could  _ really  _ dance again. 

“You look ravishing,” he murmured to her in a voice dripping seduction, “ _ all _ of you do.”

She smiled. 

Then, the music changed. 

“Is that…” she began asking as - yes, definite now - the old-fashioned instrumental twisted itself into the opening track of their Pink Floyd album. She snapped her eyes open and turned to scan the room, holding herself still to freeze her multitude of reflections. The music had returned to its earlier piece as soon as she looked, leaving her feeling like maybe she'd imagined the whole thing. “You heard it?” she asked, uncertain if he had too, or was simply reacting to her reaction.

“Our CD? Yeah…” His eyes were narrowed as they flicked around cautiously. 

“Do you know what happened to the last ghost that messed with us?” she said loudly. “I slayed him.” She waited a beat, but there was no response.  _ Chicken _ . “Let’s move on,” she said to Spike and led the way to the door. 

The other end of the ballroom opened into a sort of sitting area; she proclaimed it boring and continued through. Where she expected another hall past that door, they found instead a nursery full of ancient toys - stiff and threadbare stuffed animals, a wooden dollhouse, a beautiful rocking horse. And dolls. Lots and lots of china dolls. 

Spike’s attention caught on one lying half off a couch as if abandoned by a forgetful child, and he poked at it with his finger hesitantly before picking it up. The thing had long dark hair and a lacy white dress, rounded pink cheeks above pale lips. She eyed him quietly, waiting. He shook his head and set it back down, sitting it upright in the corner of the couch. “Thought… it's not quite right,” he said. 

She took another step towards the door, then noticed something lumpy under the edge of one of the rugs. Pulling it back, she found another doll, blond-haired in a torn green dress. She picked it up and brushed it off, then sat it next to the other one. They shared a wry look, then she took his hand and squeezed it briefly before as she led the way forwards again. 

After that, things got weird. She was sure they were consistently moving north towards the front of the house, but somehow they wound up back in the library. Or perhaps a different one - the papers were gone, the desk clear. She lifted her eyes at him in question; he shrugged and they backed out of the room. The next turn of the hallway forced them to go east, then south, then west for a long time without crossing their earlier path. She checked the time on the next clock they passed - ten minutes to midnight. 

“Thinking we should start looking for stairs?” he asked. They sort of had been for a while. 

“Yep. I mean, we don't want to pay the lost person fee.” She played it off casually, but they were both on edge now. The lack of hittable opponents in this odd non-attack was slowly ratcheting up the tension, with no outlet seeming likely to appear. “This is downright unfair,” she complained. 

‘That the ghosties won't come out to fight you? Stupid buggers have got no appreciation for the honour that'd bestow upon them,” he grinned somewhat tightly. 

She sighed dramatically. “And yet, they hide the stairs.” 

The next turn took them back to a hallway they'd already been down, she was sure of it. She stamped her foot down and dropped his hand as she turned to him. “You know what? Fuck this. I surrender. This was supposed to be a date.” She shoved her palms against his chest to slam him up against the hallway wall, then attacked him with her mouth and all the hot frustration of the last half hour. He met her just as fiercely, lips hungry and insistent against her own. Her hands fisted in his shirt and one of his slid down to cup her arse, then he lifted her to wrap her legs around his waist inside his coat. She ground herself hard against his denim-covered cock, and they both broke the kiss for a moment to let out breathy growls. “We're probably being exhibitionists,” she murmured. 

“Nah, nineteenth century, ghosts’ll be prudes,” he panted. 

“Like you?” she asked, fluttering her eyelashes. 

He shoved off the wall to press her back against the opposite one and bent his head to nip at her clavicle. “Show you  _ prude _ ,” he growled. 

“Ten minutes,” she moaned, “I don't want to flash them.”

“Won't,” he hissed, grinding himself against her again. 

  
  


** x **

 

When the clocks began to chime her face was nestled against his shoulder with a dreamy post-orgasm smile, seemingly belying their still-buckled jeans. “Satisfied?” he whispered. 

“Yes,” she all but purred. “And never. Soon as we're out, we do this without clothes.”

“Agreed.” He set her on her feet again and stepped back a fraction, his coat sliding away from her. Then something caught his eye, and he had to chuckle. “Oh, Slayer, you're glowing for me.”

She looked at him in confusion, then followed his line of sight and twisted to look behind her. Pulling the activated glowstick from her back pocket, she tapped it against him with a droll smile before looking up and down the corridor. “Hey,” she said brightly, “there’s the stairs.”

“Told you,” he smirked. “Prudes. The lot of them. Giving us the boot now.”

They made it back down to the foyer without further incident and found the tour guide waiting to thank them. The older couple from their tour was waiting for their taxi, something vague in their eyes but appearing content enough. No sign of the other two; probably dicking around happily up there still, but he could see she was having second thoughts about coming down without checking.

“Did you enjoy the tour?” Buffy asked them sweetly.

“Oh yes,” said the woman. “It's such a beautiful home, so much history. We've been every year on our vacation.”

Huh. So some people did return. 

“Ever see any ghosts?” Buffy asked. 

The woman laughed. “Can’t say that we have, dearie. I hope you've had a good time anyway?”

“Of course,” Buffy smiled. “There was the history, and the repairs, and the… historical things.”

The woman smiled and went off on a long description of the museum they had visited last week.

Gravel crunched on the driveway, announcing the arrival of a cab, and the conversation had to be cut short as they stood to leave. They offered to share their ride, but Buffy waved them off and turned to the desk.

“Would you like me to call you one?” desk-girl asked. 

“No, that's fine,” she said. She hesitated, then asked, “I was just wondering if those other guys from our group found their way downstairs okay? 

Desk-girl covered smoothly, the freeze no more than a split-second. But she may as well have leapt in the air. “They've already left,” she said lightly. “Found their way back ahead of time.”

Buffy watched the girl for just a beat too long, sending a tingle up his spine with her motionless predatory vibe. “Good,” she said. “Cause, you know, I was worried they might have got lost.”

The woman relaxed and shook her head. “Oh, no, they wouldn't get lost.” Then she seemed to rethink herself, and jabbered on, “We check everyone out of the building, for safety standards and things, haven't lost anyone yet.”

“Okay,” said Buffy. “And… thank you.”

As soon as they were far enough down the drive to be out of sight of the doors she ducked over to the bushes bordering the gravel. “Thinking what I'm thinking?” she asked him.

“Not sure…” A suspicion was starting to come together. Buffy looked taken aback, so he focused on her again to smile and add, “Yes, course I’m thinking with you on the ‘something’s up’, pet. But. You ever speak to those two?”

She thought about it, then said, “No…”

“Yeah. And neither did anyone else, far as I recall. Or about, until you asked.”

“Or touch.” Her face paled slightly. “Are you sure?” She frowned, turning it over again, then hissed, “ _ Dammit _ ,” under her breath.

“Bloody oath,” he muttered. “I swear, now on I'm slapping everyone at first meeting to check they're slappable.” 

“We should have noticed,” she said, sounding disappointed with herself. 

“Keeping to ourselves, weren't we? And looking out for ghosts. Question now is, if those two weren't really there…”

“...were we looking the wrong way.” She looked back at the house. “Do you think they live here? Or unlive, rather.”

“Guess so. Or maybe it's a job. Spooking the tourists.”

She looked torn. “Do you think we should be finding out? I mean, they could be trapped here or something. And they didn’t really...”

He could see his own thoughts mirrored on her face -  _ had _ something happened in the house, or had they imagined things well enough on their own for a bit there? He knew he, at least, hadn’t been inhaling the datura… then again, maybe he’d had that one backwards too - perhaps it wasn’t intended to make the guests  _ see  _ things, but to introduce a haze of self-doubt to anything that they  _ did  _ happen to see.  He turned his face from the place to answer her. “What are we, ghost crusaders now? Assuming that is what they were. Come on, Slayer. Leave it for tonight, yeah?”

She nodded slowly and let him lead her down the drive. “I hate to say it,” she said at the gate, “but we need to do some research.”

  
  



	3. The Rusty Fork

 

 

** + **

 

With a hefty dose of fish-out-of-water-ness, they braved the technology store and brought home a laptop, printer, modem-ey thing. Context led the missing of Willow to rear its ugly head again, a jumble of betrayal and worry. Giles seemed certain Willow would be just fine on her magical mystical tour through wherever-it-was she'd portaled off to, but no one had actually  _ heard _ from her in months. Nor did they have any way of attempting to contact her. Buffy’s concern was growing, and building anger with it. 

Laptop set up, she emailed Wes to find out how to access the online library he was building. And, what did he know about ghosts? Real ones- no, not like that-  _ ghostly  _ ones, in haunted houses, and excuse the question's déjà vu, yada yada. 

Next she tried googling the haunted house, finding nothing more than what they'd already learnt from the information guide. She huffed in frustration. Okay, maybe a maybe-haunted haunted house (and one that was almost certainly benign to the general populace) wasn't the urgent investigation of the year, but it was something, and she'd decided to look into it, and if it was a small something then the looking-into task ought to be small too, and then they would have done something useful for the army of slayers, incorporated, and the first hurdle would be passed. Where was the library she'd blown up, the town Spike had obliterated, the family that had inexplicably drifted apart in the everyday? 

“There’s got to be people around here who know everything we need to,” she mused. “I feel like we’re fumbling around blindfolded while everyone watches and laughs.”

“I’m sure there are,” Spike said, non-committal. 

“We could ask our neighbour on the corner.”

“What are we going to offer?” he asked. “Not approaching her empty-handed.”

She pondered it. “We could tell her how I got my flash new body. You saw how carefully not-surprised she was when she saw us get back. Ask for a storytime trade again.”

“Maybe,” he said. “See what Wes comes back with first, yeah?”

She agreed; as much as the woman had helped them last time, there was something about soliciting her first that felt like it would leave them dangerously back footed. There was power there, in heaping shovel-fulls. And if they did have a card to play, perhaps it was best kept in their hand for later.

“So,” she asked, “where do we explore next?” She wanted to check out more of the magick side of the tourist district, but he kept flipping between wariness and claiming it was all fakery. The two hopeful-looking stores that they had entered had been warded so thoroughly against demons that she'd buckled to the magic and backed out again. Everyone was more  _ aware  _ here than she could ever imagine the people of Sunnydale could have learnt to be, but that very openness made it harder to find the sort of allies they were after. “What about, like, bars? Where do grey demons go to meet people?”

“That sounds like the start of a terrible joke,” he told her. “But, I was thinking same. There's that one over east, past the square cemetery?” 

The Rusty Fork. They'd seen enough of the clientèle when they passed in the small hours to have pegged it for the nearest thing New Orleans had to Willy's - no one too powerful-looking, plenty of neutral demons. More open and casual-looking than the semi-private clubs dotted around, less pretentious than that classy place in the high-rise. She nodded. 

  
  


** x **

 

They watched from down the street as a human-appearing demon shuffled up to the bar and sidled in the door, then stood and followed him. Spike ordered drinks from a neutral-faced woman behind the bar while Buffy surreptitiously scanned the interior; a handful of humans, human-looking demons, a couple of clearly-demons. No vampires. They found a dim corner booth and took seats opposite each other.

“What now?” she asked after a sip of her drink. “We can’t just sit here and hope someone decides to talk to us.”

He eyed the barkeep. “Try her. Do that silly giggly female bonding thing.” 

She lifted her eyebrows at him, and he smirked back; knew that would get a rise. She slapped a palm lightly on the tabletop, then rose and said, “You do the broody-lurky thing then, and I'll get to work.”

He had a retort ready, but she was already on her way back to the bar with a cheeky bounce in her step. He picked up his glass and leaned back to- ... _ observe _ . 

She was putting on a good show - polite, sweetly smiling, tucking her hair behind one ear and generally looking very friendly. 

The barkeep looked to be in her mid-twenties, human, and although she was smiling in return, there was something icy below the surface of her that all of Buffy’s warm demeanour couldn't touch. 

Buffy was on to asking something about the advertised music nights when he realised her voice sounded muffled, as though coming through a blanket. Or… a drunken haze. He studied the glass in his hand, still one-third full of Beam and cola, and yeah, there wasn’t much cola, but he could knock back a whole bottle of Beam without feeling anywhere like this inebriated. He put the glass down hurriedly and jumped to his feet, then had to put a hand on the table to regain his balance. Fuck, this was not good. 

Buffy had turned as he stood, posture shifting instantly from open charm to a cloaked readiness. He stepped away from the safety of the table edge and grabbed her elbow firmly, hissing, “ _ Go _ .” 

She smiled apologetically over her shoulder at the barkeep as they hurried out the door, using the same movement to scan the room at their backs. The woman only watched, smiling darkly to herself. 

As soon as they were in the open and had put a few hundred yards between them and the door, Buffy turned to him. “What’s wrong?”

He'd kept his hold on her elbow, and now he shifted it down to her forearm and added his other hand. _Words, make the words clear._ “Feel drunk,” he told her, “that, the woman, musta doped our drinks.” He tried to study her eyes to see if she was feeling off from the couple of sips she'd had, but she was all out-of-focus and fuzzy. Pretty, she was.

“I'm fine,” she said, then glanced around sharply like she'd heard something back towards the bar. “We need to move.” 

He released her arm, and they started walking quickly, heads ducked. The pavement ebbed and neared unevenly, until she took his hand and he gave up trying to watch their surroundings to concentrate on the mechanics of movement. A couple of blocks on, she ducked them into a dark doorway and checked back the way they'd come before turning to him again, waiting. 

“It's, umm… think…” He could see the fear on her face clearly enough, and it pulled his focus together. “There's plants. Potenshate- make drinks stronger. For vampires. Feel like I've had a few bottles, is all.”

She studied him closely with hot eyes. “You sure?”

“Yesh.” He considered shaking his head to try and clear it, but thought that might obliterate his equilibrium. 

She glanced out of the doorway behind them again, her hand rigid and almost quivering. “Come on. I feel like someone's coming after us.”

They were silent after that, her looking everywhere in quick snaps and dodging around narrow alleys, while he just tried to keep from stumbling too much and generally felt like a right useless git. 

Halfway there they almost ran right into a vampire going the other way, and in automatic reaction she whipped her hands up to materialise the ghost-scythe and swing it. The second’s delay before she realised her mistake and readjusted her position gave the bastard enough time to hit out at her, and she yanked Spike down with her as she ducked. He hit the pavement and thought it best to stay there until told otherwise, and a stake appeared in her hand so fast that it may as well have materialised in lieu of the scythe. The vampire halted and pulled back out of reach, but didn't look ready to back down.

No one moved. 

Spike watched while she held her position, crouched half on top of him with a look of deadly intensity on her face. The vampire eyed her in return until she hissed lowly to it, “ _ Just bloody try me.”  _

It took a step back, then broke and ran. She glared after it until it was out of sight, then stood up and grabbed his hand again. 

A few (more cautious) turns later they were on their own street and dashing for the slight protection offered by the invited-vampire-only threshold of home. 

Closing the door behind them at last, she picked up the scythe from behind it. They both looked at the car keys hanging on the hook. 

When she didn't move to take them, he stumbled to the fridge and pulled the door open. Food. Food was sure to help. “Can maybe drive a bit soon,” he offered, staring blindly into the too-bright fridge interior. 

“I could,” she said, offering right back. She'd had a few turns on the way back from Cleveland, would be able to get them out of town in one piece. Mostly. 

“Do we want to?” he asked quietly. It felt like the decision had been made and mutually, but he had to check one last time. 

She looked at the keys again, posture slightly wistful. Then turned away. “No.” She snicked the lock on the door, then set the scythe down in the middle of the room. Crossing to the fridge, she took his hands from their clinging hold on its door and led him to the bed. “Sit,” she said gently, “I'll get it.” 

 

He sat. Then lay down. The bed felt semi-corporeal, or he did, like he was sinking into it again, endlessly and weightlessly, down through the impossibly puffy pillows.

The microwave beeped, then she returned and sat on the edge of the bed. He dragged himself up the (weirdly short) distance back out of it to sit, then took the cup she held, glad when her hand stayed on it too. 

“Are you sure you're going to be alright?” she asked worriedly. 

“Yeah. Just need to sleep it off.” The microwave beeped again, and she left for a moment to exchange the empty mug for a full one. 

“I have blood now,” she said in sudden inspiration. “To share.” Her voice sounded excited and afraid - nay,  _ still _ afraid. Worried for him.

He stilled, fighting to pull the right answer from the murk inside his head. Saliva tingled in pavlovian expectation, and he gulped down the second mug quickly to satisfy it and stall responding. He put a hand on the junction of her neck and collarbone, feeling the heat pumping beneath the surface. Allowing himself this. “You do. Keep it in there today.”

“You won't hurt me,” she said. 

Awfully confident, wasn't she? “No,” he said. “Not necessary, and better one of us is at full ability.”

She pursed her lips but didn't argue further. He dropped the hand from her shoulder to her waist and curled in to lie his head on her lap. God, she was comfortable, like a rhythmic hot water bottle with the lulling pulse and breath of her, a glowing beacon to cling to in this foggy and nauseating sea. She stroked her fingertips through his hair and asked again, “Are you  _ sure? _ You know I'm going to call Wes to check your explanation.”

“Yes,” he mumbled into her stomach. “He'll have learnt something of it at watcher school, no doubt. They love in- incapaciting us.”

“Can I do anything else?”

“Just don’t make me move. The hangover’s gonna be a bitch.”

“I reckon you're just a lightweight,” she said softly, fondly. “You've been sipping Fanta out of that hip flask all these years.”

“Don't tell anyone,” he mumbled, and snuggled in deeper. 

  
  


** + **

 

She stroked him until he slept, then ever-so-carefully wriggled out and stood up. Checked out the windows on the front of their room; the street was quiet and empty, everything as it should be at near midnight. She picked up the phone, intending to wake Wesley for a whispered telephone conversation; it wasn't that she didn't trust Spike’s word that he'd be fine, but she needed to know everything she could and anything he didn't. Although… it would already be morning in far-off London. Maybe… 

She rang Giles. 

And then, just in case, and because he  _ had  _ been Head Boy at watcher school, after all, she went ahead and woke Wesley for his watchery advice. He corroborated Giles, and she was relieved. 

Then she pulled their chair over to the window and curled up to watch, scythe on her lap. She'd been in two minds about their room only having openings on this one side - the lack of sunshiny windows was handy, and it only gave her one direction to guard, but having a second door to flee through had to be safer than hiding in a dead end. Fleeing was off the table now though, absolutely and definitely, after hovering faintly in the corner for so long. Enough running. Perhaps, enough hiding. The room was right: a solid wall to its back and teeth bared towards the street. 

Every now and then through the night she would stand and stretch out her limbs to keep them awake (probably more often than she needed to, but she was out of practice with this whole ‘sitting still in a real body’ thing), then pace around the room and look at her sleeping vampire again before resuming her guarding. 

The anger that fear had flared in the bar grew like magma beneath the earth, a slowly rising force of nature sinistrous in its silence. As night gave way to a glimmer of light in the east, the feeling permeated to the last corner inside of her; she was done watching him be hurt. This was where they'd chosen to stand. And she would damn well fight for them to be safe in it.

The sun rose, and Spike stirred enough to bury his head under the pillow with a groan of complaint. She tucked the curtains in close around the frames, then checked the lock again before spooning herself in behind him gently. She would sleep, then she had somewhere to be.

  
  


She was prepared to go on her own if necessary, rather than postpone the visit. But Spike was up by the afternoon, and back to normal after a couple of cups of coffee and a few more of blood. He watched her while she adjusted a belt to hold the scythe on her back, slipped a stake into each boot, and dabbed on some lip gloss. 

“Plan?” he asked. 

“Magic store. Then the bar.”

He nodded, unsurprised, and picked up his coat.

  
  


She chose the dingy-looking herbal supplies store tucked away beside a park where they'd often hunted vampires, and found the place unwarded. The counter was manned by a human-looking and warm-blooded demon, only recognisable as other than human by the vibe that tingled off him. She was polite but firm in her request; they left with what she wanted and no trouble. 

  
  


** x **

 

She stepped into the bar on soft feet and stopped in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips. He pulled the door shut behind them and dropped the security bar to lock it, then stood in front of it with his feet planted firmly. The barkeep had frozen in place when they entered, and now slowly put down the cup she was holding and crossed her arms over her chest, face showing a mixture of surprise and apprehensiveness.

“Can everyone see me okay?” Buffy asked loudly, looking around the room. “Or should I stand on a chair? You, at the back, with the horns? Good. So. Last night, we came in here looking to make friends. Meet people. Get a feel for what kind of problems you might be having that we could help with. But this bitch-” she pointed a finger lightly at the bar, “-thought it'd be fun to dope our drinks. And someone here…” she looked around slowly, hovering finally on the clawed feet of a prilarn demon at the back before addressing the room again, “thought it would be a good idea to come after us while we were vulnerable. That was your one chance,” she told the prilarn’s side of the room. “Now, I'm not here to make friends tonight. I'm here to do my job. If anyone’s got a problem with that, raise it now.” She waited.

The prilarn eyed her disdainfully for a moment, then it stood up, head almost brushing the ceiling. They were odd creatures, almost vulture-like with their scaly clawed feet and leathery, wrinkled skin. 

Oh, and their penchant for trailing down wounded mortal creatures and ensuring their deaths. 

This one had to be an idiot, because, “I've got a problem with it,” it scrawed, and then it went for her. 

Several chairs fell as the prilarn charged; a few it’d knocked into, and a few more that were tipped over as more intelligent patrons leapt clear. Two small brachen demons made to move towards the door; Spike shook his head at them once, glaring, and they cringed backed against the wall.

Buffy dodged the prilarn’s rush with a twist of her feet and punched it in the kidney region in passing. It turned lightning fast, but she was faster, and her foot met its chin with a  _ thunk _ of impact that snapped its head to the side. _Should have kept it up out of range_. Undeterred, it recovered its balance and charged forward again, dodging at the last second and sweeping a clawed foot towards her head. She pulled her punch and jumped back, and a fair proportion of the rest of the room leaned forwards eagerly. When it tried the same move a second time, she was ready, ducking low to kick out the foot it stood on. The prilarn hit the ground stomach first, and she had the back end of the scythe between its shoulder blades before it could move. 

For a second he thought it was about to see sense and surrender, but then it proved its idiocy once more by half rolling and lunging for her foot with its beaked mouth. Instead of driving the scythe down to pin it harder she retracted it slightly, flipped it around, and lobbed off the creature's head. 

Anyone still sitting forwards in their seats sank back. Buffy straightened and lowered the scythe to her thigh. “Anyone else?” she asked. No one moved. “Thought so. Where was I?” 

“Your job,” he called out.

She grinned. “Yes. My job. I’m Buffy. The chosen one. This is Spike, the vampire champion. But you lot already knew that, didn’t you?” She dropped the grin in the space of a blink, suddenly deadly serious. “We know word’s gone around. So add this. Unless you’re hurting people, we’re not here to fight you. But we will if we have to. And we will win.” She turned back to the barkeep, now hovering by the employees’ exit behind the bar. “Now, you are going to  _ serve us a drink. _ And it’s going to be a safe one.” She glanced over at him with a smile that didn't touch her eyes and asked, “Beam and coke?”

He'd have chosen almost anything else on earth to drink tonight, but it was the principle of the thing, wasn't it? He jerked his head in quick affirmative, wearing a carefully cultivated sly smirk. 

The barkeep poured two drinks and put them on the counter. Buffy took out the bag from their stop on the way here, dropped two small crystals into each glass, then gave her a dark look and picked up the glasses.

He dropped his blocking stance and unbolted the door, then eyed the brachen demons. “You should come join us,” he said. Bottom of the food chain in here and clearly knew it; they'd do well to throw in together. The pair pulled further back and started forming excuses, so he added, “I wasn't asking.” 

They followed him to the table. 

  
  


When he sat down next to her, Buffy’s hand slid onto his thigh and squeezed so hard his eyes almost watered; it was the only outward sign she let herself reveal all evening. 

The brachens were terrified, but liked their beer; an hour later they were smiling more honestly and seemed like they really believed maybe they'd get home alive tonight after all. This wasn't their usual place, they admitted eventually; they had a friend with a sort of garage bar they usually spent their weekends at. She'd gone out of town this week, and so they'd wound up here for a change. But they knew most of the regulars, and insisted that the barkeep was generally decent enough. Just had a problem with vampires. Any vampires. 

Slayer watched the woman from the corner of her eye, an unfamiliar flavour of anger rippling under her mask as she plotted an approach. He took her hand and held it firmly. “ _ Leave it, _ ” he whispered. “Not tonight, yeah?” 

Her eyes flashed mutiny, but she acquiesced. 

The brachens made moves to leave, and Buffy insisted they should walk them home safely. When she realised they were afraid of her finding out where they lived her shoulders slumped sadly, making her look like the lonely little girl she was. He was ready to pull one aside and threaten him into making her feel better; either they sensed it coming, or they had stupidly soft hearts in there, because they asked if she'd see them to the end of the street instead. They traded phone numbers before saying goodbye, and the brachens promised to call if they needed help with anything. 

  
  


“Do you think I should have used my hands?” she asked on the way home. “I figured the scythe is so instantly recognisable, but I don't want anyone thinking I  _ need _ it now that it doesn't pop up by magic.”

He chuckled. “If you'd used your bare hands I'd have had a hell of a job stopping half the place from stampeding the door. You did good, pet.” 

She smiled, pleased. “So did you. I saw that bitch’s face falter at how enjoyable you made your drink look.” There it was again, the curved razorblade of a lethal anger that he somehow felt had nothing to do with her slayerness. 

He stopped walking and pulled her up against him, banding his arms around her waist and leaning away to look at her face. There were words he'd been going to give to her; their eyes met, and syllables were inconsequential. He kissed her instead, and her tongue was a hungry, lapping little thing, cleansing away the booze with strawberry-flavoured lip gloss and warm saliva. She moved her lips down his throat afterwards and bit his skin sharply at the base, a single fast nip that made him twitch and his cock jump. She looked more surprised with herself than he was as he felt the air moving across what must be a slight gash from her teeth, so he pulled her in harder and dove for her mouth again before she could comment. 

They separated long enough to get home, hurrying this time for very different purpose. He kicked the door shut behind them then slammed her up against it, both of them bruisingly rough and dark-eyed with heady power. The scythe scraped a chunk of wood from the door before she found her belt buckle and dropped it with her pants; his belt was next, then she was lifting herself by the edge of the door frame to wrap her thighs around him and pant, “ _ Fuck me like we couldn't at the ghost house.” _

He did. 

  
  


 


	4. Visiting

 

 

 

** x **

 

The new place was bigger, safer, homier. After months of cars and caves and cheap motel rooms, followed by a single room apartment that fitted the same mould, the two bedrooms and separate living room of the small stand-alone house felt positively luxurious. A block away from their old rental, the rear of the property disappeared into the thick swampy forest lining the riverbank. Even at midday, deep shade was only a couple of steps from the back door; six steps and the light filtered down to a moist and somehow primordial feeling of perpetual fog. It was perfect.   


They relocated what they could of the garden, carried their few belongings down, and stained the carpet of the empty living room with the last dribble of a bottle of red wine in celebration. Dawn promised to visit on break, and Buffy set about filling her new closet properly.   


Patrols continued in the same vein they had; ever-widening loops of the city as they pushed the vampire population further back. Their new brachen demon friends - or, hoped-to-be friends - didn't call, but they did begin meeting the occasional neutral demon that didn't quite run from the sight of them.

Confidence trickled in, tasting like that gained from taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. Long silences were common between them, but they were warm silences, calm and soft as lazing in bed, peppered with brushes of each other's skin, with smiles that lived in their eyes.

There was still no word from Willow, and an ominous feeling crept into his gut on the subject as Buffy made calls to Giles, Wes, the council coven, Xander. They started looking closer at the magic shops, the fortune-tellers, those claiming contact with realities beyond their own; bound to be charlatans for the most part.   


"We know one who's not," Buffy said eventually, and that evening they took each other's hand and walked the short distance back up the road.

  
  


** + **

 

"You know what currency I deal in," she said, settling back in her seat on the porch with a sense of satisfaction.   


"Information," Buffy said. The woman lifted her eyebrows sceptically. "Knowledge?" Buffy tried.  _ Those are different things, right?  _ That answer earnt her a tilt of the head in a  _ 'sort of' _ gesture.   


"Stories," Spike said.   


The woman shook her finger at him, approving. "Why?"

"A story is… more than the facts it holds," he said cautiously.   


"Bingo. So, what are you after this time? You know what I want."

"We've got a friend who's missing," Buffy said. "Missing outside of this dimension. We hoped you might be able to help, or point us to someone who can."

The woman was quiet, tapping her lip as she thought. "You sure she's  _ missing? _ Not  _ hiding? _ Doesn't do to go travelling into places you're not wanted."

"We're missing her," Buffy said carefully. "We don't want to drag her back if she doesn't… We just want to know if she's okay."

"All right. I can’t guarantee you'll get what you want, but I can find out what there is to be got from here. And it'll cost you. Commission to me, cash to the contractor. Deal?"

"Deal," Buffy said.

The woman held out her hand, squeezing each of theirs briefly. "You can call me Lalia," she said afterwards. "Now spill. How on earth or otherwhere did you get yourself a genuine flesh-and-blood hand to shake?"

An hour later they left with an agreement to return in a week's time and a resolution to do their best to put speculation aside in the meantime.

  
  


** + **

 

There was a giant red-haired man at their door. He must have been well over six foot tall, with hugely muscled arms covered in blurry tattoos and attached to an equally solid-looking torso. He wore all grey, a plain shirt and pants, which made his fiery beard and shaggy hair stand out all the more. He also looked angry.

She first saw him stepping down the garden path when she clambered from bed to fetch a drink, and froze to scan her eyes over him quickly before diving for a t-shirt and pair of pants. She  _ really _ needed to buy some sweatpants, fluffy pyjamas, emergency nakedness-covering garments.

Dressed, and with Spike alerted, she waited for the man to knock. Or start battering the door in. Or something. When nothing happened, Spike peeped through the edge of the curtains and confirmed that he was simply standing there.

Spike moved to stand behind the door while she hefted the scythe and flexed her fingers, then he swung the door open smoothly. She had a sudden thought that maybe the man was from the utilities board or something, and therefore perhaps a readied gleaming weapon was not  _ quite  _ the look she should be going for. But as he came into view, she realised that his feet were going straight through the doorstep to stand on the ground below, bringing him almost down eye level with her. Probably not here to adjust their water, then.   


The man's eyes landed on her weapon and shot wide, then in the space of a blink he simply dissolved into nothingness in front of her.   


“Hello?” she asked the empty doorway.

No one responded. Spike peered around the door with a quizzical expression, then slowly swung it shut again.   


“I think I scared him,” she said, frowning.   


“Ya think?” he said, and then looked at her and started grinning. “Such a little fella too. You bully.”

She laughed with a sense of release and stepped back from the door. “I need coffee, then we'd better see what Wesley’s sent back about ghosts.”

Peering out of the window again with a bemused frown, Spike said, "I'll put the kettle on."

  
  
  


“Ghosts,” she read off the laptop screen from her spot back in bed. “...come in different flavours.”

“What flavour’s grey and red?”   


“There's… eidolon, haunts, lemures, lost souls, shades, spirits, spectres, phantoms, and poltergeists. Oh, and wraiths. But most of those are thought to be variations of the same thing. I thought lemurs were monkeys?” He didn't take the bait, so she continued, “He says that ghosts that hang around for a long time are-” she paused and pulled a face, “honestly, Wes,  _ ‘are real ghosts’. _ The souls of mortals that haven't moved on.   


“Real ghosts are invisible and mostly powerless to affect the living. They can flash a few lights and bang stuff around, but that’s about it, unless they manage a possession. Most of them have some unresolved issues to work through, a need to satisfy, then they cross over to wherever they should be. Average time period is around a year. The longest and most strongly manifest authentic haunting case on record is-” she paused to give him a wry grin, “a case from Sunnydale, California, 1955-1998, thought to have been accentuated by the power of the hellmouth.

“ _ Summoned  _ ghosts are pulled back here by a mystical object, and bound to the power poured into that object. They can appear more strongly than natural ghosts, are often visible and able to interact easily, but once their batteries run down, they’re gone again, back to wherever that soul was pulled from.” The topic was getting far too uncomfortable; suddenly the whole idea of wanting to visit the ghost house felt like it had been a terrible one, and she wished she could blame it on someone else.   


“This doesn't track,” she said, turning away from the screen. “If lasting ghosts are invisible, what’s behind all those stories of places visibly haunted by their inhabitants of a century or two ago? Or some mysterious long-dead relative?”

“Who only appears at night, looks a bit pale… sometimes leaves behind a wee spot of neck trauma?”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” he agreed. “State of my hair right now, we could fly over to London and see if we can spook someone with my resemblance to certain class photos.”

“There’s  _ photos? _ ” she asked, ghosts forgotten. “ _ Class  _ photos? From when you were human?”

Spike froze, old habits of concealment automatic. She waited.   


“Might be,” he admitted eventually. “Doubt they’re still around."

She made a mental note to investigate this further later. "Okay. So, Mr Grey-and-red must have been summoned by someone."

Spike had his pensive face on, looking off into the middle distance. "Maybe not. Remember how no one else saw those boys at the ghost house?"

She nodded slowly. "Or the woman in the cemetery last week. That vamp thought we were bonkers when we told her to run."

"And then she vanished, just like this guy."

"I'll put a question mark over it." They were quiet for a while, thinking over the possible implications. "Think he'll come back?" she asked eventually. 

  
  


He reappeared at dusk, standing on the footpath across the street. Now that they had a chance to study him properly, the staunch anger in his body language looked more like a nervous front. They watched him watching them for half an hour as the darkness grew, then Buffy’s patience broke. Propping the scythe beside the door, she opened it slowly and raised her palms to show him she was empty-handed. Spike slouched beside her with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, deceptively relaxed. "We won’t hurt you," she called out. "At least, not as long as you don’t plan on hurting us."

After a long moment, he spoke in a quiet voice that somehow carried clearly. "I don’t."

The stalemate continued. She shared a glance with Spike, who looked just as lost as she was, only seemed to be expecting her to take command somehow; arching her eyebrows at him only prompted him to shrug helplessly. She turned back to their lurker and asked as politely as she could manage, "What do you want?"

Watching them warily, he crossed the street and stopped at their front gate. "I… heard you help," he said in that same quiet voice. "Heard… not just humans."

_ Us, or the people we help? Both, I suppose.  _ She stepped to one side to stand in front of Spike, leaving the doorway clear in unspoken invitation. "Can you?" she asked, nodding at the entrance. "Without being invited?"   


"You won’t slay me?" he asked dubiously.   


"Not unless you touch my chocolate stash," she said lightly. His look of distrust deepened, so she added quickly, "No slayage of non-violent visitors. Promise."

Moving slowly, he crossed the front yard, walked incorporeally  _ through _ the porch again, and stepped through the doorway to stand inside. Again he was weirdly short, his knees disappearing through the floor, presumably to the level of the earth below. "I can," he said once beyond the threshold, pointing at the line of the doorframe, "but I do not like to be rude in such a manner."

"Oh," Buffy said awkwardly. "Uh, come in." She waved towards the kitchen/dining room, closing the door quietly as he made his way down there. "Would you like--"  _ a drink?  _ She felt her cheeks flush slightly in embarrassment, suddenly sympathising with poor Wes and his endless and pointless offers of tea. "To sit?" she corrected quickly, pulling the seats back from their small dining table to enable him to take one without needing to move it.  _ Heh, look at me with the incorporeal-guest accommodations. _   


He sat down, then lifted the rest of his legs up through the floor to put his feet down on top of it. Catching her watching, he said with strange sheepishness, "I am very tall. You are… less tall. It did not seem like an intelligent idea to appear threatening, where it could be helped."   


"Yep, I'm a short-arse," she said with a grin, hoping to put him at ease. He just seemed so nervous that she was beginning to feel like she  _ was _ a bully. "So, uh, what did you..."   


"Spike," Spike cut in, offering his hand across the table before dropping his palm down onto it with a wry huff of breath.   


_ Right. Introductions. _ "And I'm Buffy," she added quickly.   


"I am David Markson," the man said, lifting a hand in a small wave.

"And you're a ghost?" Spike asked matter-of-factly.

"Indeed. Since '54."

"But that's…" she started, running the numbers.   


"A long time," David replied. "Almost as long since anyone has seen me so effortlessly or completely. This is rather disconcerting."

Spike snorted softly. "You don’t say."

"There are rumours going around about a living couple--" his eyes darted nervously to Spike, "ah, a  _ corporeal _ couple, who are culling vampires and offering assistance to anyone who needs it. And that they can see us, even unintentionally."

"I think we've just had that confirmed," she said, unsure how to feel about it.   


"Rumours in the  _ ghost _ community?" Spike asked.   


". .Yes. We're not a community, as such; it would be unusual for anyone to exchange more than two words with each other in a normal week. But we know who's around. And lately… things have changed."

"And that's why you need our help?" Buffy asked.   


"Aye. I don’t know if there's anything you can do, but…"

"Lay it out," Spike said. "Then we'll know."

Haltingly, he told them of vague incidences that had been increasing all year - ghosts vanishing unexpectedly, odd sensations, a general feeling of disruption and disturbance from an external force. "And now there are the hunters."

"Hunters?" Buffy asked.   


David's eyes flicked around the room quickly, then he leaned closer to the table, like a great red-grey bear huddling from the snow. "Hunters. Packs of summoned ghosts, seen moving through the city. They're different from us - of a mind, and stronger. People say they've seen normal ghosts caught up in the middle of them and carted off, to who knows what end. We'd move away, but… we are where we are. It's not in our nature to  _ go _ anywhere, until we're ready to leave this plane."

"So you want us to help them? Find out about these… hunters, and what they're doing to the ghosts?" she asked.   


"Yes. It is… unless we are fairly new, it's extremely hard for us to catch the attention of even the genuine psychics. But we are there all the same, and we only wish to be left in peace. Please."

She turned to Spike, a silent conversation moving between their eyes before she looked back to David. "Okay. I don’t know how much help we'll be, but we'll do our best. Do… how can we contact you?  _ Can _ we contact you?"

"You have my name. If you call for me, I shall hear you."

"Okay. Well, we'll, um, call you then," she said.   


He nodded politely, then they showed him out.

  
  


** x **

 

Buffy closed the door behind the ghostly David and snicked the lock. As if that would make a difference to him; the man had walked incorporeally through the garden fence on his way out. Still, he seemed harmless enough. It was the wider ramifications of his visit causing this swirl of tension, rather than the man himself.   


"Patrol?" Buffy asked softly, hooking her fingers into the front pockets of his jeans.

"Yeah." He pulled her to his chest, warm and solid under his hands as she tucked her head up under his chin, arms winding around his back in turn. His eyes drifted shut as they stood leaning into each other, the lulling rhythm of their breath smoothing everything down again. Then he pulled back to kiss the top of her head, she picked up the scythe, and they went to find something to kill.

  
  


 


	5. Not-Hiding

 

 

 

** + **

 

"I'd imagine an army of summoned ghosts could be quite a formidable force, in the short-term," Wesley mused over the phone. "Of course, you would need a huge power source to call them up long enough to be of any use, never mind the necromantic skill required to maintain control…"   


She could picture the look on his face, the far-away stare as he drifted off into academic speculation. "What kind of source, Wes?" she asked brusquely, before he got lost out there. "And don’t you dare say the H-word."  _ We did not move here to guard another hellmouth.   
_

"Well, um, uh... " Wesley hedged. "Volcanic sites could be a possibility... Oh! Dimensional crossroads - points where the calling is made simpler by naturally thin walls - Orleans  _ is _ known as a popular confluence for mediums and psychics. It may be that its position and reputation has as much to do with the connections between planes there as it does with the chances of history; perhaps if the summonings were attempted in the right position, using a power source charged steadily over a great period of time… an ancient dragon stone, perhaps, though it's unlikely any survive… and with a full team working the necromancy, or some method of binding minds together- yes, you could…"

"I'm not giving you bad ideas, am I?" she asked, smiling.   


"What? Oh, no, I was simply-" The tone of her question sunk in, and he snorted a short laugh. "It is intriguing. But I don't think it likely to come to much. If someone has that degree of power to throw around, it seems a terribly wasteful way to go about using it." He paused, then his voice became careful and sombre. "You said the wild ghosts were being captured. Perhaps what we're looking at is less of an army to direct at a physical objective, more of a mercenary force for some private vendetta. It may be that once they've found their target the whole thing will fade away without any of the living being any the wiser."

"And those they snatch up in the meantime? Ghosts are people too, Wes," she said softly.   


"I know," he sighed. "Are you certain that man was being honest with you? It's hard to believe our facts could be so… well, I guess it's not, really." He fell quiet, and she heard the tapping of his pen against the desk. "I'll see what I can find on dimensional ley lines in the area. If you come across any more information…"

"We'll call you. Thanks, Wes."   


"Buffy?" Wesley asked.

"Yes?"

"Be careful out there," he said gravely. "Whoever's behind this, they won't be pleased to have been noticed beyond the, uh, ghost community."

"We will," she assured him. "Talk soon."

Hanging up the phone, she looked across the couch at Spike, leaning his back against the opposite armrest with his feet wound through hers in the middle seat. After sifting back through Wesley’s information for a few minutes, she asked, "What's a dragon stone?"   


"Think… it's like a special rock. Sparkly or something." She gave him a dubious look, and he continued, "Dragons used to keep them in their dens, and they'd soak up some of the ambient power around them from the dragon. Work like a battery to power up anything you want to cast."

Eyeing him very sceptically now, she said, "Dragon batteries."

He shrugged. "So I heard. Don't think there was anything special about them in themselves, just whatever rock a dragon happened to take a shine to. Or maybe, that happened to be in the earth where they dug their den into it. Seen them referenced in old texts sometimes, like any other mystical doohickey, but I've never heard of anyone having one. Probably all used up or gone flat since the dragons left. That was long before my time, 'fore you start asking, missy." He threw her a fake warning glare, and she thought about reaching down to tickle his feet.

_ Dragons.  _ Well, she had thought she'd seen one, up on the tower. "We should have asked David more questions. He probably knows something about the ghost house, too."

Spike nodded slightly, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. "You know, I tried to come here with Dru once. Orleans. Thought she'd love it. Didn't get near the city before she made me turn around. Said it was too noisy. Too crowded, all trying to get in her head. Course, coulda been she just didn't like the look of the traffic, or the gnats in the air."

"Or it could have been ghosts…. We came here." Drifting in their rootless wander, washing up like storm-tossed flotsam from a weary sea of despair.   


"We did," he murmured. Both of them thinking, is that why it felt  _ right? _ Had they known, somehow, without knowing, that this was where she needed to be to claw her way back?   


She didn't like the idea that what had felt like a choice they'd made, made repeatedly, hadn't been a free choice at all. But… if it were true, had they known, they'd only have chosen to come here sooner.   


"Call David," Spike said. "We're missing too many pieces to make sense of it all."

"Okay. Um, how?"   


"How would I know?" he said, looking suddenly irritated. Reactionary. They both were today. She waited, and he took a deep breath before letting it out through his nose slowly. Calmer, he said, "Say his name, like he told us."

"David Markson?" she tried tentatively, towards the front door. "David Markson the, uh, ghost? We need to talk to you… Buffy and Spike need to talk to you." She paused expectantly, then looked at Spike, embarrassed. "I feel ridiculous. He's not here."   


Spike lifted his eyebrows at her and slowly crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his seat superciliously.   


Her embarrassment did a barrel roll flip over into shame. Not once in all those long months of her invisibility had he ever hesitated to reach out to her, or shown any awareness of what people thought when he carried on conversations with her in public. "I'm sorry," she murmured. Then added affectionately, " _ Spook _ ."   


His eyes sparkled, light with smug amusement now that she'd caught the lesson. "David Markson," he called, loud and firm. "Get your arse over here."

  
  


David Markson came through the front door, moving cautiously down to the living room as they sat up straighter. Buffy gave him a little wave, and he echoed it before folding his hands in front of himself meekly. He was so  _ big _ and solid-looking, almost too big for their small living room, yet there wasn't the slightest vibration from the fall of his feet, or shift in the movement of the air he seemed to occupy. Spike's nostrils flared again, searching for nonexistent scent.

"You called for me?" he asked.

"Yeah," Spike said. "We need more information about all this."

David looked cheered by that; she supposed they hadn't sounded very committed or encouraging last night. "Of course." He sat down across the room, with a final glance at the scythe leaning against a nearby wall.

"Why are you scared of it?" she asked, interest piqued. "I mean, you’re a ghost."

"That… is not a mortal weapon," he said carefully.   


"Yeah, forged by mystic guardians for she alone, yadda yadda," Buffy said. "I did kill a ghost with it once-" David's eyes widened in alarm, and she hastened to add, "An evil ghost! One that was trying to kill us. Actually, with the ghost of it…"

"The ghost of it?" he asked.

"Yes…" She hesitated; it didn't seem wise to spill their secrets unnecessarily. "It was a ghost for a while. Then it was made not a ghost again."

He eyed it more curiously. "Perhaps that is it. It, ah, prickles the hairs I don’t have on my neck, if you know what I mean. I should not like you to test it on me."

"Noted," she said. "So." They should have made a list; prepared questions. One of them should have a notepad. Not her. She wasn't notepad-person.   


"What do you know about ghosts and this place?" Spike asked. He wasn't notepad-person either. "Is it some kind of hotspot?"

She picked up her laptop from the table and opened it on her knees. Wordpad, so much less with the stuffy.

"I don’t know," David said apologetically. "I have nothing to compare it to."

"What about the ghost house?" she asked. "Tenshaw House."

"Ah." He looked pleased to have a question he could answer. "They're well-known. The head mystic there offers-  _ offered _ listening sessions to anyone who could make themselves heard by him. And of course, the place is home to a few from the neighbouring area. Or, was." His face took on a worried expression. "A month ago they cast a threshold spell over the property. It prevents us from entering. It would also prevent anyone from leaving."

"Like, they're trapping them there?" she asked.   


He tilted his head in a doubtful 'maybe' gesture. "Or they suspect something is happening, and it's a protection."

"Think we'd be safe to go poking around asking them?" Spike asked, with just a hint of threat under his voice.   


David appeared to consider the question carefully. "Yes. They're communicants only; there's no dangerous ability amongst them. Or there wasn't the last I knew."

She shared a look with Spike, then added,  _ Visit Tenshaw Mystic  _ to the page. "Are there other places like that?" she asked. "That you can’t enter?"   


"Some of the churches. A couple of the older graveyards. Anywhere that has had sufficiently powerful wards cast at one time or another."

"These hunter ghosts," Spike said. "Have you seen them yourself?"   


"Not personally," he admitted. "They've only been seen on the west side of the city. But I have heard the same descriptions from several who have."

"Reckon you could mark where on a map?"   


"Yes."   


Spike dug theirs up, and David directed them to mark several areas. All were far beyond the areas they'd become familiar with. With another prompting, he listed the places he was aware of that were barred to ghosts, and she highlighted them too.

"Anything else you can give us to go on?" Spike asked.   


"Sorry."

"All right." Spike looked at her, confirming accordance, then told David, "Here's the plan. You're going to go out and ask all your ghostie friends and neighbours what they know. What they've seen, felt, heard about, when and where. I know you said you're not a chatty bunch, but you'll have to learn to be if you want us to be able to nail this thing. Come back tomorrow night - sundown - and we'll compare notes."   


"I shall do my utmost," he promised gravely, then nodded at them both and left back through the front door. 

  
  


** x **

 

Tenshaw House was a bust for hard facts, but the staff had cautiously confirmed the rumours. The two ghosts in residence were fairly new - had drifted in only a few months ago, to the welcome of a woman who had lived there for years and was no longer able to make herself heard. And who had since vanished unexpectedly. Worried for the safety of the boys, the staff had taken siege precautions and hired assistance to block anything incorporeal from crossing the boundary. Beyond that, they weren't interested in helping; it was 'look the other way and mind your own'. And please leave. But,  _ we do wish you two luck. _

"Wankers," he muttered again.   


" _ Bloody _ wankers," Buffy confirmed. Walking beside him, she stretched out her arms, shaking her muscles loose again. They hadn't made plans for the night beyond this visit, but she was casually veering west as they left Tenshaw behind.   


He slowed his feet, turning to her with an eyebrow raised. "We spot anything, we're hiding, right?" he said.   


"I don’t  _ hide _ ."

"You bloody will. No sense tipping our hand when they think they're invisible and we don't know how to fight them. We observe."

She scrunched up her nose in angry concession, then grumped, "I don’t hide. I  _ gather intelligence. _ "

He snickered, raising his hands to gesture apology. "Of course." Taking her hand, he picked up the pace again.   


The streets were empty of ghosts - as far as they could tell - and aside from a pair of vamps, their explorations were uneventful, beyond seeing for themselves the sites they'd marked on the map earlier. Heading home through the supernatural-heavy section of town at four am, he slowed, then stopped and nodded at one of the stores. "They were open last time we came through here."

"So…?" Buffy considered the shuttered door and empty window display of Ezra's Readings. "Shops close," she challenged; playing devil's advocate to push the observation's debate towards a conclusion.   


"That’s the second one we've passed. 'Séances and Summonings' looked gone too." He nodded back the way they'd come. "Reckon they mighta cleared out in advance of something."

She was quiet, squinting at the closed store while she thought it over. Then she smiled, turning to him. "That means someone must know more. We'll ask Lalia when we see her. And let's check the rest on the way."

Lalia, Lalia; the unspoken impatient countdown in the background. At least this ghosthunting for David was something they could physically  _ do _ right now, unlike the search for their own. 

  
  


Wesley added to his speculations about ley lines with an eager burst of watcher-speak and the emailing of further maps to compare to the marks on their own. There were rumoured leys running everywhere here; straight lines and logarithmic spirals, triangles and concentric rings. He cautioned that most were on their own merely examples of apophenia - the human tendency to see patterns where there were none - but that where the phenomenon repeatedly struck out from the same sites, there was often found to be more to those places. By the end of the call he'd drifted into the theories of group mind intelligence versus mass hysteria, and Spike tuned him out.

David returned on time, and they were able to add yet more marks to the map before convincing him to tag along on that night's patrol-slash-ghosthunt.   


In a halting, confusing way he tried to describe his existence to them as they walked, Buffy prompting him with simple questions which he struggled to answer. Where did he live? Where had he been that day? The one before? He didn't seem able to express it in words, as much as he tried. Answers to harder questions came easier; he'd  _ been  _ a fisherman, he'd  _ lived _ down by the harbour. He'd worked off of a small boat called the Kyleeoo, and the details of that daily life seemed clearer than Spike’s own from the same decade.

The further west they got, the more often David lagged behind; he'd drift to a stop with a vacant look on his face, they'd stop and turn to him, and he'd catch up.

"You can run, right? If we come across something?" Spike asked. Bloke didn't seem scared, but he was slowing them down; Buffy was starting to look frustrated that she couldn’t grab hold of his sleeve to make him keep up.

"Yes. Sorry. It's- it's hard for me to… to come this far. From where I… am. I can't quite-" he began again.   


"Wait-" Spike cut off the latest apology. "That’s what it is, isn't it? You’re back there somewhere. Your, ah, bones or dust or what have you?"

David looked down at himself with a sort of slow, deep confusion. "I… yes… St Patrick's." He looked up at them, a satisfied smile spreading on his face. "St Patrick's. That is where I go." He nodded.   


"Okay. And can you jump straight back there? Like you jumped away from our door?"

"Yes," he said, confident now.   


"Good. You lose us, or we have any trouble, bolt. Otherwise,  _ try _ to concentrate."

David made it three more blocks, stopped again, then vanished before they could say anything.   


Buffy matched his sigh, only hers tended more towards a frustrated growl than the half-hearted sound of disappointment he'd made on the bloke's behalf. She was lonely, he knew; fed up with smiling at strangers and only receiving suspicious looks in return. She'd even dragged him to the god-awful human bar not far from home a few times lately, where she'd sized up the patrons as if she was going to tie one down and forcibly make friends with them (he'd considered telling her that really wasn't the best way to go about showing off your attributes, not that he would know from experience or anything). Perhaps he should encourage her to go there on her own one night; she'd have much better success at making friends without him glued to her side to scare everyone. He could always slip in later, catch a glimpse of her having fun.   


"Coming?" she asked him, tossing her head to flick her hair back breezily as she started walking again.   


He sprung to catch up.

  
  


They were brushing vamp dust off their clothing when she froze mid-shake and mid-sentence, then hissed, " _ Down!" _   


They hit the grass together, and he bit back the question on his tongue when she froze there in perfect silence. Ears reaching out for any sound, he followed her gaze to the head-high stone wall surrounding the small park they were in. From this vantage point it was impossible to see over, and she glared at it before glancing around quickly in search of a better position. He gave her an urgent look to ask  _ what the hell is it? _ Which she ignored, motioning him to follow as she bolted in a low crouch for a patch of shrubs several yards away. Once hidden, she took his hand for silence, then, very slowly, they stood up.

Beyond the wall, a group of human-shaped creatures were moving quickly down the street towards them, ranging back and forth across it like a pack of hunting hounds casting for a trail. There were at least twenty of them, all darkly dressed, several with visible open wounds that were too fresh for those of zombies. Besides, they were absolutely soundless, flowing over the ground like fast-moving mist, darting into corners and through fences in quick dashes before rolling back to the centre of the group and out again. Ghosts, then. There was something deeply sinister in the driven silence of them, eldritch and menacing; the thought of attracting their attention made his bones cringe, and a suppressed shudder ran through Buffy’s hand.

The nearest were already approaching the park wall, and he sank back down onto his haunches with her, holding his breath while she controlled her own to near-silence. As they watched through the branches, several of the ghosts made short forays through the wall, bounding over the ground with preternatural speed for several paces before disappearing back towards the road.   


When none had appeared for half a minute, they carefully stood up again. The street was empty again and unchanged from the ghost's passing; as they watched, a car came rolling past, the driver tapping his fingers to his stereo casually.   


Buffy took a deep breath and let it out slowly.   


"I was hiding," he said.   


"Me too," she agreed readily. "Those things were just… wrong." She shook off the shudder. "We'd better try to follow them to do the intelligence gathering thing."   


They moved cautiously at first, sprinting quietly to the end of each block and peering around it. An hour later they'd slowed to something more like a dispirited wander, and with a good three-hour walk home still before them, they had to concede defeat.   


"Hot chocolate, home, call David to check-in?" he asked. The food truck by their local shops served inedible food all twenty-four hours of the day and night, but their hot chocolate wasn't half bad, and the two of them had stopped there a few times lately as the nights grew cooler.   


"You have the best ideas," she said, smiling. 

  
  


** + **

 

David was waiting at their front door - and he wasn't alone. Sitting on the step beside him was a woman who might have been in her late thirties, her face just starting to take on the comforting crease lines of someone who smiled easily and laughed often. She wasn't smiling now, however, her eyes anxious as they looked from David to them and back.   


Stopping with Spike inside the low front fence, Buffy smiled in what she hoped was a reassuring way. "You've brought a friend," she said to David.   


"Yes. Marie has seen the hunters."

"So have we," she told him. "I guess you'd better come inside."

  
  
  
  



	6. Advancing

 

 

**** +  
  


The ghosts came in, and didn't leave. Marie appeared to have decided that these scary people would be an effective wall to hide behind from the scarier people out there, and David seemed to feel bound to stay with her. Or he was hiding his fear behind hers. A fear sandwich.   


And the ghosts had reason to be afraid. While they were off chasing shadows, Marie had seen what happened to ones caught by the hunters - they got  _ eaten. _ Or, whatever their ghost-selves were made up of got taken, inhaled, devoured somehow. Drained. End result - no more ghost. And, presumably, stronger hunters. Or perhaps some benefit to their master. Either way, 'Vampire Ghost' took on a new meaning.  _ Lucky I'm the vampire ghost slayer. _   


She emailed an update to Wesley and asked him to send anything he had on barriers for ghosts. Then opened one from Xander; _Good luck tonight._ _Call me when you get back._

At sunrise their two guests somewhat tactfully retreated to the backyard, seeming content to sit there silently with the same vague look David had had the night before. Daylight didn't hurt them, they explained; it just made things fuzzy and their movement slow.

" _ Do you think they can hear through the walls?" _ she whispered to Spike in bed.

"Don't care if they can," Spike said cockily. Then snuggled up to go straight to sleep, belying the sentiment.   


She lay there trying to think about ghost wards and means of protection, empty shops and what the big picture behind it might be. She did not think about where Willow might be. Whether Willow was okay. How Willow could have skipped off without a care when they'd needed her so badly. The clock by the bed said it was barely 8 am, so there was a whole day to get rid of before they could visit Lalia and hope to find out. Thoughts spun in circles, but her body was calm after walking all night, Spike was a comfortingly familiar dead weight pressed against her, and eventually the circles settled into sleep.

  
  


When they got up that afternoon, they found they now had three ghosts.

  
  


**** x  
  


Evelyn was tiny and lively and must have been in her eighties on her final living birthday. She bustled inside with a  _ hello, dearies  _ and  _ bit of bad business, isn't it? _ , and barked orders at the other two when she thought they could be getting in the way. She hadn't seen anything herself, but she was a sharp little thing and wasn't taking chances. Somehow or other, word was spreading. They'd better solve this fast.   


After a back and forth discussion that ended nowhere useful on exactly  _ how _ to go about solving it, they switched to trying to question the newer arrivals about how they experienced their existence. Answers were as vague as David's.   


As sunset approached, Buffy dithered around choosing clothes and worrying over whether they could pay Lalia's unknown contractor via credit card, then panicked that they were going to be late.   


"You lot had better wait here," Spike said to their… visitors.   


Buffy turned the TV on for them.

  
  


Lalia's nightly seat on the porch was empty as they approached, then the front door swung open and she motioned for them to come inside. They stopped on the porch together.

"Come in tonight, Spike," she said, waving them both forward. The invitation gave the impression that if it wasn't already somehow limited with magic attached to the words, she'd be performing a disinvite when they left. Probably did them on a regular schedule, the crowd she dealt with. He could respect that. Her eyes were sneakily sharp on Buffy, who hadn't made a move to enter.   


"Both of us?" Buffy asked in her best sweetly-charming-but-dim voice.   


Lalia cackled, amused to be seen through. "Yes,  _ come in, Buffy. _ "

"Thank you," Buffy said with a bright smile, and they followed Lalia in.

She showed them to a small sitting room facing the street, closing the door silently behind them. The walls were all hung with curtains of a lightweight black fabric, painted with symbols and lines. Armchairs were arranged around a small circular table; the only other furniture present were several candelabras dotted about, lighting the room with their flickering flames.   


A man stood up from one of the armchairs as they entered, tucking his hands into his pockets, then removing one again quickly to hold out to them. He couldn't have been much older than Buffy. Under his embroidered silk ceremonial robe, he wore a pair of jeans and a t-shirt branded with a skating logo, scuffed sneakers on his feet. "Hiro," he said. "It's nice to meet you." His accent sounded more Californian than local, with just a touch of Japanese influence.   


They shook hands and gave their names; his expression didn't flicker when he shook Spike’s.   


"Please, have a seat," Hiro told them, waving to the chairs and waiting for them to sit before reclaiming his own.   


Lalia patted him on the shoulder in an almost motherly fashion, then left them to it.

"Thank you," Buffy said.   


"Lalee asked me to look for the red witch who channelled the calling?" Hiro asked.   


"Yes. Willow." Buffy answered. "Rosenburg."

Hiro nodded. He seemed nervous in the manner of someone new to a job and still finding their feet, rather than anything to do with them personally. "I asked the tatsu to search for her," he said. "He says the imprint of her magic is spread across this plane, connected through many souls; these must be the slayers. He couldn't find the singular connection for her own soul here. The tatsu then travelled on beyond this plane, and found traces of her having passed through two other realms. This would have been around March of this year." He paused, waiting for them, probably wondering if he'd spat out too much too fast.   


"Tatsu… dragon?" Spike asked.   


"Yes. He has been with our family for centuries… I inherited his custodianship from my grandmother earlier this year."

"Sorry for your loss," Spike said, and was echoed a moment later by Buffy.   


"Thank you."

"March is when Willow left," Buffy told him, after what she must have deemed to be the required amount of polite pause. "So, other realms. Then what?"   


Hiro showed them his empty palms. "There are places the tatsu cannot go. Willow seems to have continued into the plane of the Fyrskein; do you know it?" They shook their heads. "It's a sort of dreaming-world, where one might go to discover things hidden inside themselves. Parts of it connect with our own dream travels at times, but to walk freely through that plane is to follow the paths to completion, rather than the broken tiles we glimpse from here. It's very difficult to get to."

"If she went there in March…" Buffy mused, "how long could it take to find something? It's been seven months."

"These things seem to take as long as they take. There's no time there as we understand it; just the journeying, and eventually an end."

"What happens at the end?" Spike asked.   


"You leave. It's not a dangerous place; people have returned after several years sojourn, exactly as they left, with much knowledge gained."

Spike flicked a glance at Buffy; she was tapping her lip with a finger as she thought.

"If we wanted to contact her somehow, is there a way to?" she asked.   


"I don't know, I'm sorry. Possibly. Some magic-users claim to be able to touch upon its edges consciously in their sleep states, but it's not my area of expertise. Or rather, it's not the tatsu's."

Buffy suppressed most of her disappointed frown, and checked in with him silently again to share her unworded thoughts; they would look for someone who could go there. Then she turned back to Hiro. "Thank you. That's… much more than anyone else has been able to tell us. Thanks."

Hiro nodded. "It is my pleasure. I hope your friend finds what she is looking for soon."   


"What do we owe you?" Spike asked, before Buffy could raise their second set of questions and muddy the waters of the transaction.   


Hiro gave them a number, and Buffy dug her wallet out of his coat gratefully; they'd brought enough cash.   


That settled, Spike said, "Right. What can you tell us about ghost-related current events around here?"   


Hiro's face tensed into a look of wary suspicion. "What sort of 'ghost-related events'," he asked carefully.   


"Someone's hurting them," Buffy said, a flash of anger flavouring her voice. "Summoning their own ghosts and hunting down the wild ones."

"And what does that have to do with you?" he asked, eyes narrowed.   


"They need protecting. Helping. It's our job," Buffy said firmly.   


"What she said," Spike added.

Hiro bit his lip and sighed out a short breath. "Okay. Listen, I'll tell you what I know, but only because Lalee has vouched for you."

"She has?" Buffy said. "Huh."

Hiro nodded. "You didn’t hear it from me, right?"

"Got it," Spike said.   


"I can’t see them, the spirits, but the tatsu notices things. He's a creature of water; he feels shifts in the mist. I know there's trouble. Summoned ghosts. And I can see the empty shops easily enough. People in the know are worried. People are going. We might leave too, head up the river a ways until it blows over."

"You know where they're coming from?" Spike asked.   


"West of the city centre, somewhere. I don’t know who's behind it."

"Could you find out?" Buffy asked softly.   


Hiro sighed heavily. "We could try. But we couldn't do anything if we did, except attract the wrong kind of attention. We're not fighters."

Spike grinned, and the gleam in Buffy’s eye matched him. "You leave worrying about that to us, mate," he said. "Find out where the summoned ghosts are based, then you can scuttle off to safety while we take them down."

Hiro bit his lip again and looked down at the table, thinking. "All right," he said after a long moment. "I'll see what the tatsu can find out tonight."

"Thank you," Buffy said kindly.   


"You know anything about dragon stones?" Spike asked. "Been told they could be what's powering the summoned ghosts."

Hiro shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. They’re different creatures entirely, the dragon-dragons."

Buffy jumped in. "What about the… ley-liney dimensional crossroads thingy?"

Hiro frowned at her.

_ Grr.  _ "Is there something about this place that makes it easier to be a ghost here?" she asked. "Like, the walls are thinner?"

"Ahh. Yes. It goes with the river. Things… move easily. Energy converges from a million streams. It's a good place to be if you wish to straddle realities." Hiro said. He rose to his feet, straightening his robe as he prepared to leave.   


They stood too, and Hiro offered his hand again. "The tatsu can find you," he said as they shook. "I'll be in touch in the morning."

The room's door swung open, nudged by Lalia's foot as she leaned against a desk just outside it. She looked comfortable enough to have been there for a while. Hiro murmured something to her in passing, then the front door opened and closed behind him.

Lalia didn't move, still facing in the direction Hiro had gone. They watched her, waiting, and the room seemed to dim slightly, making the hairs on the back of his neck prickle to attention.   


"Thanks," Buffy said after a few seconds, cutting through the sensation with a flick of her hair as she took a step forward. "We'd better get going."

"Hmm…" Lalia agreed quietly, still facing away. "Ghosts to protect." The sense of something ominous and charged swelled up again.

"Yeah…" Spike said slowly. Moving subtly closer to Buffy, he brushed her hand with his to say,  _ wait. _ Her skin almost hummed with readied energy, but she didn't move forward again.   


Lalia turned to face them at last, giving them a long look of steady appraisal. Then she nodded to herself and stood from her half-sit on the desk. The feeling of intensity vanished from the air. "You're doing this then," she said. It wasn’t a question.

Buffy answered anyway, in a tone that brooked no argument. "Yes."

Lalia gestured for them to follow her to the front door. "I don’t know who it is," she said, speaking plainly for the first time since they'd met her. "Someone new here, I suspect. I'd also guess they're working alone, or in a very small group, because they've managed to avoid notice very well. But to be maintaining control of so many ghosts so well, their power over minds must be extraordinary. That's what's got everyone on edge." Before opening the door, she turned back to them. "Listen. Before you try to directly attack them, you'll want to take out whatever power source they're using to tie their ghosts here; make them have to scramble to keep any of them, lessen the mojo they're able to throw at you personally. I doubt they'll see you as a real threat immediately; let them underestimate you, and hit fast." She opened the door. "Good luck, and watch yourselves. Now, bugger off."

  
  


"We should stay home tonight," he said as they walked back. "Keep our heads down, wait for Hiro."   


Buffy grimaced, but nodded. "We need to work out what we're looking for when we find the place anyway. In case they forgot to put a big label on their magic battery rock."

The ghosts were all waiting, and seemed very relieved to have their assumed protectors back. Buffy tried again to impress upon them that she couldn’t guarantee she'd be able to do anything if the hunters were to show up here, but they only flicked glances at the scythe and told her that was fine, looking perfectly confident that she could. 

  
  


**** +  
  


Xander answered on the second ring, despite it being somewhere around 2 am on his end; he must have stayed up. Once the topic of Willow fell into a series of uncomfortable silences, she filled him in on the ghost mission and told him to get to bed.   


Returning to the kitchen, she found Spike sitting at the table with the three ghosts. Their map was spread out again, and Marie was pointing out a restaurant in the central city that apparently served a wickedly hot Creole jambalaya.   


"We should all go," Buffy said, sliding into the seat next to Spike and leaning against his shoulder. "When this is over. Celebratory dinner. I know you can't eat dinner, but we can, you know, socialise. Ooh, you can laugh at me trying new and spicy things."

Marie looked uncertain of how the offer was intended to be taken. "Umm…" she said.   


"I mean it, all of you, let's do it," Buffy said quickly. Swallowing her pride, she added, "It's been really hard to meet anyone here. You're the first people we've had over, and I know you're not exactly here to make friends, and we'll help you no matter what, but it'd be neat to do something non-work-related after…" Oh god, she was babbling like some desperate social pariah in front of the cool kids. But Spike needed people around, dammit, needed friends other than herself, to share stories with and tell jokes to and play poker with (and maybe ghosts couldn't do the last one but they must have some good stories).

"We'd love to," Evelyn said eagerly. "Ooh, it's been an age since anyone’s asked me out. And there's so much I could tell about some of the people around here, believe you me. It'll be a great night."

"Yes," David added in his peculiar way. "I would like this. Thank you."

"Great!" Buffy said. "Well… let’s go over where we're at on solving this. Sooner we smash the bad guys, sooner we can do it. Pass me the laptop."

  
  


Hiro knocked on their door just after sunrise, snapping her awake. He, at least, could be offered coffee, which he accepted gratefully, taking a seat at the kitchen table while she put the kettle on. Spike shoed her away from the mugs, so she sat down across from Hiro to wait.   


"The tatsu followed them last night," Hiro said once they were holding drinks. He looked disturbed, disquieted with himself perhaps. "Eventually they returned to here." He indicated a place on the map still spread across the table, and she bent closer to look while Spike picked up a pen. The spot was to the western edge of mid city, a couple of miles from where they'd seen the hunters themselves. "It's a big house, two stories over a ground-level basement," Hiro continued. "Basement is where they're keeping whatever the ghosts are tied to. The buzz of it reaches out from there, but it's low, must be barely enough to sustain them. Ebbing. The summoner will need to find more power to supply it soon, unless this… eating other ghosts has something to do with it."

"And this summoner?" she asked.   


"There were four people upstairs. Three humans, appeared to be hired staff- or, controlled staff - they move as if their minds are shuttered. The fourth is your ringmaster. The tatsu was noticed by her, and withdrew. She has a lot of power of her own; whether witch or demon, I don't know. Probably both."

"Okay," she said, feeling strengthened by -solid facts!- at last.  _ Could be human though. Bugger.  _  "This building she's in… was it 'homey'? Or like, more of an office-cum-lair?"

Hiro frowned. "The building… is a house. I don’t know any more than that." He looked at Spike and away again quickly as he could her rationale, then shrugged apologetically. "If she's summoning things there, she may have negated any threshold it possesses."

They'd just have to hope so. "Thank you, Hiro. This is a massive help."   


"You will take her on?" Hiro asked.   


_ I can't slay a witch… can I? _ She met Spike’s eyes and found him carefully impassive, leaving the decisions to her. "Yes." They'd work something out if they had to. "Soon. Very soon."

"Good. I think… she must be planning something big. No one builds a force like this just to pick on ghosts." Hiro idly traced the line of the river on the map, still spread across the table. "This is where I live," he said after a minute, pausing on a point along it. "Small houseboat. Or more of a boat, really. Blue and green, ribbons on the railings. If the staff survive but don't come right after you take out the summoner, bring them to me. I might be able to help them."

"You're not leaving town, then?" Spike asked.   


Hiro shook his head, frowning slightly. "I'd like to. The tatsu says stay. I'm not… look, I didn't think the tatsu would choose me when my grandmother went. I'm hardly the best person for all this. My brother’s spent years training in combat magic and astral travel in the hopes of working with the tatsu; he won't speak to me now. Last year I was at UC Davis, looking forward to finishing my veterinary degree. But I'll do what I can."

_ Didn’t want to be chosen, aye.  _ Buffy smiled. "I'm sure the tatsu knew exactly what it was doing," she said warmly. 

  
  


After he'd left, they looked at the new circle on their map again. David, Marie and Evelyn gathered around.   


"You're going to say tonight, aren't you?" Spike asked her.   


"Yep."

He played with his lip. "All right. Hard and fast."

She smirked at him. "That an offer?"   


"Could be," he said, running his tongue across the inside of his bottom lip.

She giggled. "Afterwards." _When the ghosts have moved out._ _Thinking of…_ "We need our own anti-evil-ghost wall. Until this is over. I don’t want to jinx us…"

"I'm not keen on moving into a church if we have to bail. And we can't afford to lead anything back here. 'Sides, now you've said it, you have to go for the reverse-jinx and do it."

"I'll ring Tenshaw House and see if we can borrow what we need."

 

 


	7. Behind the Curtain

 

 

 

**** x  
  


"I am sorry I cannot accompany you," David said as they got ready.   


Spike shook his head. "Don't be. Those hunters are disturbing enough when you’re not their target." At least they had wards around the property now; he and the others should be safely (trapped) here.

David nodded soberly. "Be careful."

Spike went to clap him on the back, but stopped himself in time. "We will."

Outside, the car door shut, then Buffy came back in and picked up the scythe. There was an energy to her that had been rare for too long, a sort of keen alertness and lively confidence that felt catchy.

"Should take some snacks," Spike said to her. "Could be waiting a while." It was almost sunset, but they didn't know what time the hunter ghosts would be leaving. Assuming they would.   


"Stakeout picnic before I get my stake out? Good idea." She went into the kitchen and dug around in the cupboard, returning with an armload of junk food. "Ready?" she asked, watching him closely.

_ I'd follow you anywhere.  _ "Ready."   


She led the way to the car.

  
  


"Oh shush. Put a chip in it," she said, then threw one at him. It landed on his chest, making her frown. "Stupid uneven chips. We should have bought Pringles."

"Nah. These taste better." He picked it up and ate it.

"I'm telling you, they won't have an incest-baby or an abortion. She'll miscarry," Buffy continued while his mouth was full.

"Too simple. Trust me. She'll have twins, then it'll turn out they weren't Chad's at all. Or that she was swapped at birth, so he's not really her half-brother. Or Alistair will kill her, then it'll come out that it was his baby, put there by the witch."

"That show is damn weird."

"Passionately."

She rolled her eyes and grinned, then ate another chip.

A movement on the top level of the house they'd been watching caught his eye; a shadow crossing the curtain, perhaps. He froze, staring down the street at it, and Buffy put down the chips quietly.   


When nothing further happened, she asked, "What time is it?"

"'Bout eleven."

Buffy sighed. "If we haven't seen them by midnight-" she cut herself off.

The hunters came pouring from the house in a tumbling pack of dark shapes, swift and silent and seeming to instantly fill the whole yard as they darted back and forth. Once out on the street they turned north, away from where he and Buffy were parked, and began to spread out as they bounded off down the block. Within twenty seconds of appearing, they were gone.   


" _ Were there more?" _ Buffy whispered.   


" _ Looked like _ ," he whispered back. At least half as many again as they'd seen two nights ago.

They turned back to watching the house, now motionless again. Buffy fidgeted, stretching out her hands and shoulders, but resisted the urge to voice her impatience.   


Finally, he murmured, "That’s ten minutes." They got out of the car quietly.   


He shadowed her across the street and down the footpath, keeping close to the shelter of a neighbouring hedge. She moved quickly, not pausing before entering the yard and slipping down the side of the house; if their presence had been felt they couldn't afford to waste time. They found the small side door to the basement, secured with a padlock. This part had been debated heavily that afternoon; speed versus the stealth of a lockpick. They’d settled on speed. Wedging the point of the scythe through the padlock, she bent it back and snapped the shank open with less noise than he'd expected. The door grated slightly as she pushed it open, then she was in, and he was reaching a hand for the doorway with fingers crossed in his mind. No barrier. He blew out a quick breath of relief and followed her.   


The basement was windowless and almost pitch black, the only sources of light the door they'd just come through and a tiny sliver in the ceiling at the far end - probably the access door to the house above. She'd paused two steps inside, probably waiting for her eyes to adjust, and he touched her arm to keep her there as the sounds and smells of the room threw up red flags in his brain.   


A heartbeat thumping fast and light in fear; old blood, stale sweat, the tang of ammonia - there was someone else down here. He flipped open his zippo, but before he could light it, footsteps sounded on the ceiling, hurrying towards the sliver of light.   


Buffy followed after them, moving slower as she negotiated the unknown space in the dark. " _ Find it, _ " she whispered quickly. This point he'd grudgingly conceded was only sensible: let the living person face down the potential necromancer if they had to do everything at once.

The extra heartbeat - now joined by a wheezing breath - came from the opposite end of the room, out of sight behind an old blanket tacked up as a curtain. Something scuffled down there; feet on dusty concrete, perhaps. He shoved his zippo back in his pocket and followed the sound.   


Keeping the rest of himself safely back, he stretched out one hand and grabbed the edge of the curtain, then tore it down with one quick tug.  _ Let's see what you're hiding back here. _ In the space behind it, something alive huddled against the floor, metal scraping against metal as it cringed away.  _ Guard beastie? _

The door in the ceiling opened, flooding the room with light, and he realised what he was looking at. 

  
  


**** +  
  


Buffy found the base of the stairs and ducked to one side of them, where she'd still be in shadow if the hatch opened. Whatever was up there would have to come down here to stop them, and stairs were an excellent obstacle to stall with. Spike had gone straight to the far end of the basement, obviously sensing something; she could concentrate on defence while he found and destroyed whatever mystical doohickey they were after.   


More footsteps joined the ones already above her, then the hatch door was pulled open and she got her first look at what was standing over it. It wasn't a demon. It was Amy. 

  
  


**** x  
  


"Not here to hurt you," he told the man in a quick whisper.  _ I hope.  _ "You're powering the ghosts, aren't you?"   


The man tried to pull back further, but the shackles on his wrists prevented him. He half nodded, then whispered back, "Unwillingly."

"Can see that." The man was shackled to one section of a metal summoning circle set into the floor, six feet across, with a short, heavy chain running from manacles on each of his wrists looped through it. He was filthy with dust and dirt and plenty worse, and smelt like he'd been here for at least a week.  _ Shit. _   


He glanced back over his shoulder in time to see Buffy flash forward and topple someone down the stairs, then hook the scythe behind the feet of the person behind them and jerk him down too.  _ Lackeys _ . Crackly blue light sparked above the hatch door;  _ magic _ .  _ Fuck.  _ He turned back to the man before him and studied the chain. "Keep it tight over the ring, and keep your fingers clear," he said, hefting his axe.

The man cringed down further and did so, turning his face away. The first blow crushed a link on the chain in a shower of sparks, and a second forced it open enough for him to wrench it further apart and slip the link free.   


"Did you kill it?" Buffy shouted back.

"It's a person," he yelled back. To the man in front of him, he asked quickly, "Breaking this circle gonna do anything to the ghosts?"

He shook his head. "It only gets them here."

_ Bugger. Thought as much.   
_

"Killing me won't help either. They can survive on their own now."

"Wasn't planning on it," he said, shooting him a glare. "Can you run?"   


"I think so."   


"White hatchback on the street, to the left and a few houses down. Get in it." He stood to go and help Buffy.   


"Wait!" the man said. "There's a girl, here before me, back there -" he pointed into the darkness behind him, climbing shakily to his feet and panting with the effort.   


_ Christ, this is getting more complicated by the second.  _ "Anyone else?" he snapped.   


"No."

"Got it. Get out of here." The man looked hesitant, so he added, "Now!"   


The man stumbled towards the door. 

  
  


**** +  
  


Buffy shouted back again, "The battery's a-?  _ Oh _ ."   


At the top of the stairs, Amy laughed. "Problem?" She hadn't made a move to come down, watching with amused interest as her two minions tried and failed to charge at Buffy. They were both groaning and attempting to sit up; she really hoped they'd stay down without her having to hurt them any further.

Amy's hands sparked with constant tiny flashes of white lightning, as if something was overspilling or sparking off of raw wiring whenever she moved.   


"What's happened to you?" Buffy asked.   


"This?" Amy asked, throwing a hand forward and sending a jolt of electric light from it into the basement, making Buffy dodge. "It didn't  _ happen to me. _ I  _ earnt _ it. Not all of us are lucky enough to have everything fall into our laps."

_ She's stalling. And the hunters are still out there… _ Buffy backed away from the stairs slightly and threw a quick glance behind her. A man was stumbling towards the door, a broken chain swinging off his wrist, while Spike was further back in the dark somewhere. 

  
  


**** x  
  


He found the girl by smell, a pile of rags in a pile of rags by the far wall. Her skin felt cold and bloodless, but when he pressed a finger up against her jugular it pulsed back weakly. He scooped her up against his chest and ran back towards Buffy. "We've gotta run."   


She nodded once and started backing away after him, keeping her eyes on the ceiling door.   


"Oh no, you're not taking that one," the witch said. "You're here to give  _ me _ something."

In front of him, chain-man suddenly stopped and stepped back from the doorway again as someone appeared in it. Slack, vacant face; a weapon being raised. Shifting the girl's meagre weight slightly, Spike freed his left hand and brought the flat of the axe down at their head, and the man's body crumpled in the doorway.   


In the yard beyond him, the first of the hunters appeared in sight, racing down the side of the house towards them.

Somewhere around then, everything went to hell.

" _ Slayer!" _ he hissed.

She whirled around, scanned the yard, his armful, the man wobbling on his feet beside him, and instantly barked out, "Split," then ran towards the stairs.   


"No!" he shouted after her.

"See you at home!" she shouted, then she was up through the hatch at the witch and out of sight.   


The hunters surged towards the door, and he swung the axe instinctively at the first one, only for it to pass right through. The thing was nearly on him before he’d finished the swing, and he braced the arm holding the girl, willing it to shield her somehow while images of incorporeal-Buffy dusting vamps flashed warningly through his brain. And then, inspiringly. The hunter hit his arm solidly with its head, shoving him back a step, and he dropped the axe and brought his elbow down at its head instead, visualising it connecting. It did. With a satisfying dull crunch the hunter went down, and halfway through the floor before rolling back. The ones behind it altered their path immediately, diving through the walls on either side to avoid being bottlenecked in the doorway. He grabbed the shoulder of the man half-cowering beside him and pushed him at the door, shouting, “Run!”

A hunter dove at him, and he dodged awkwardly and kicked out at it, deliberately putting his will behind the movement again. His boot hit it in the side of the chest solidly, and it fell. The rest jumped back after that, most of them avoiding him to head upstairs, bounding straight up through the floor weightlessly.  _ Buffy… _ She had the scythe, free movement… she could handle a few hunters alone better than they could together with the deadweight of two useless civilians to protect. He could hear her calling out taunts as she ran, trying to draw them her way while he got everyone out. God knew where the witch had gone; probably taking cover while her army dealt with them.   


Chain-man screamed as a hunter knocked him to the grass outside. Muttering a mixture of prayers and curses under his breath, Spike ran outside and swung his foot into the face of the hunter that looked like he was about to eat the guy, then hauled him to his feet again and shouted, “ _ Fucken run!” _

Fighting off a couple more hunters racing towards the house, they made it to the car. He threw the girl onto the backseat as chain-man collapsed into the passenger one, breathing hard. Spike shoved the keys into the ignition and roared the engine to life, then jumped out of the car to tell chain-man to get behind the wheel and the fuck out of dodge.

The front door of the house banged open, and the witch ran out onto the porch, then pointed at them and shouted, " _ Get her back!" _   


Several of the hunters tumbled out behind her, then Buffy appeared, swinging the scythe at the back of her head. The witch half fell as she ducked away from the swing, and the hunters paused in confusion before she shouted at them again. Spike jumped back into the driver's seat and threw the car into reverse as the hunters raced towards them. 

  
  


**** +  
  


Spike finally took off in a screech of tyres, and she turned her full concentration back to Amy in time to block one of her lightning-bolt-things with the blade of the scythe. She'd already caught one in the thigh earlier, and it'd hurt like a bitch. "You're going to need your army back to fight me," Buffy told her. "You suck on your own."

"Keep the bitch," Amy growled, jabbing another bolt at her. "She's done for anyway. You've got something better." Her eyes fixed on the scythe.   


"Sorry," Buffy told her, "it's kind of an exclusive relationship."   


Most of the hunters had only gone as far as the street before they stopped and turned back, moving more cautiously now as they circled up around her.  _ That's right, arseholes.  _ The destruction of the first three to catch up to her inside had obviously taught them something.

Amy snickered. "No, it's really not." Backing away several steps, she kept her eyes on the weapon and began chanting under her breath.   


The scythe suddenly got  _ heavy. _ Impossibly heavy. Muscles screaming, she let the blade end thunk to the porch as she struggled to keep hold of the stake end.   


Amy ended her chant and smiled. "You can stay there if you like," she said.   


The hunters lunged at her. One last time, Buffy desperately willed her arms to tear the scythe free from whatever mojo Amy had put on it, then she abandoned it to duck her head and fling herself at the biggest gap in the ring of hunters.  _ Incorporeal incorporeal…  _ She went through without making contact, rolled on the grass, and leapt back to her feet. They were almost on top of her again already, manic grins on their faces and somehow all the more terrifying for their silence. She bolted, knowing they'd outrun her in seconds. 

  
  


**** x  
  


Two blocks on, he slowed down and checked behind them in the mirror. The street was empty. Heaving a short sigh, he slowed further and wondered whether they should circle the block to come up from the other end of the road, or turn straight around. A few seconds later, a hand came through the door and grabbed chain-man by the throat.   


"Jesus fuck!" he yelped and lunged over to punch at the door where the hunter's head was already halfway inside. The car swerved violently, chain-man screamed a gurgly scream, and Spike's fist hit flesh, followed by the metal of the door as the hunter let go and fell away.   


Wrenching the steering wheel to get them back towards the centerline, he put his foot down.  _ New plan.  _ Chain-man whimpered and squashed himself against the left side of his seat. There was no sound from the backseat.

  
  


The chain across the driveway of St Peter's Church crunched the car's bumper, then gave way at one attachment point and whipped through the air to bounce off the other side of the fence. A car length inside the churchyard, he slammed to a stop and threw the handbrake on.

"Get out," he told chain-man. The man looked up slowly, panting and dazed. "Get the fuck out!" Spike roared at him, feeling fangs burst forth in his mouth.   


The man scrambled for the door handle and half fell from the car in his rush to obey. Spike followed him out the same side, pulled open the back door and picked the girl up as carefully as he could in a hurry, then deposited her on the man's lap. She looked worse out here, skin deadly pale against the dark hair falling over her face.   


"Stay there," he told the man harshly. "I'll be back, and if you've gone anywhere I'll kill you myself."

He dove back into the car and reversed out of the church in a spray of gravel.

  
  


He'd driven past them before they registered in his brain, too single-mindedly anticipating what might be waiting for him back where he'd last seen her. When what he'd seen sunk in, he slid the car to a noisy stop and spun it around with a few crunches of the gears, then gunned it back.

The hunters were running the fenceline of a tiny church a block and a half from the witch's house, probing at it hungrily every few steps. He sent a silent apology to the car, then held down the horn and floored it towards the low picket fence. His head hit the roof as the car bounced over the curb, then the car smashed through the fence and skidded to a stop on the sloping grass.   


He threw the door open and jumped out, shouting her name as the engine stalled.

"You almost ran me over!" she shouted, diving on him and crushing him to her with one arm. "And I told you to go home!"

"I beeped the horn," he said shakily, squeezing her back. "And I said,  _ No _ ."

When she loosened her crushing hold on him, he reached back and switched off the ignition, hoping nothing was broken.

"Where's the people?" she asked, looking past him into the car. She looked like she'd been dropkicked through a hedge into a concrete wall, leaves in her hair and a nasty graze swelling up bloodily under one eye.

"St Peter's. It was on our map. This place wasn't."

"Lucky guess. Or, more of a wild hope." She twisted back to look at the hunters. "I lost the scythe."

"Shoulder?"

She shook her head. "Just bruised."

"Everywhere looks that," he told her.   


"Face. Road. Tree. It was a thing." She shrugged carefully with one shoulder. "You?"

"Punched a door. One of them came through the side of the car, scared the unliving daylights out of me."

She grinned and kissed his knuckles. "Next?"

"We can’t leave them at St Peter's all night."

"Can't leave  _ you _ here all night either," she said. "Rush them again?"

"Cross your fingers," he said, and got back in the car.

It started. She opened the passenger door, then stopped, watching what he just had - the hunters had all started moving away, slinking off down the street towards the witch's house.   


"Huh," she said, then got in the car.

  
  


Chain-man was exactly where he'd left him, and Spike got the two of them back into the car while Buffy watched, pressing her head against the cool glass of the window and closing her eyes. She'd definitely taken some harder blows than she wanted to admit.   


"You got a name?" Spike asked as he got back behind the wheel.   


"Oh. I do apologise. Tim Halverstein." He held out his hand between the seats, then looked at the state of it and withdrew it again.   


"And her?" Spike asked, cocking a thumb at the girl behind him.

"I don’t know. We haven't spoken. The witch has done something to her… she needs a mystical healer."

"Not a hospital?"

"No. Or not alone. I'm sorry, where are we going? Do you have a safe place?"   


"I hope so," he muttered, and turned the car towards home.

  
  
  



	8. Influx

 

 

**** x  
  


There was someone sitting on their doorstep; only a faceless lump in the dark at this distance. Spike shoved aside the urge to floor it straight past and away, and let the car keep moving smoothly. "Slayer," he murmured warningly. "Someone's outside the door."

She sat up tensely and peered past him at their house as they went by, then twisted around quickly to look behind them. "I think… yes. It's Giles. Go back."

Spike stopped and reversed back up the road to see Giles now standing on the lawn, one hand raised to wave. "Bastard," he growled in relief, pulling into the driveway.   


"Please tell me you're not here about a new apocalypse?" Buffy asked pleadingly as they got out of the car.   


"Not at all," Giles said. "I, ah, had thought perhaps you might allow me to help with your issue somehow."

"Oh," Buffy said, surprised.   


"Sorry I'm too late," Giles offered.

Spike snorted humourlessly. "Party's just getting started." He threw Buffy the keys.

  
  


**** +  
  


Giles held his arms out to her tentatively, uncertain of where they stood.   


"It's good to see you," she said and hugged him to her. "But I think I'm getting blood on you."

"I don’t mind," he murmured back.   


Releasing him, she went to open the house, tilting her chin back at the car. "Help Spike with the others."

David, Marie and Evelyn were all gathered inside anxiously.   


"He is a friend?" David asked. "We weren't certain."

"Yeah-"

"Oh, dearie, look at you," Evelyn cut in. "Come and sit down, you poor thing."

_ Great, I must have cemetery lawn in my hair.  _ "I'm fine," she told them, grabbing a bag of peas from the freezer before gravitating towards an armchair. Sinking down into it, she moulded the ice pack over her collarbone. Less first aid-able was the sting of defeatedness in her gut that was saying they'd just turned a relatively small problem into a massive one. Amy had known they would show up sooner or later. She'd known Buffy would bring the scythe. And it felt like she'd only let them get away with her hostages because she thought could grab them back at any time. Or new ones.   


As much as he'd seemed decent and sensible, she should probably be out there making sure Tim didn't try to do a runner between car and house. They had a lot more to ask him before he went anywhere, and the smartest people could be idiots when they were afraid. Plus, running from them? Probably not an entirely idiotic idea right now.  _ No, Spike can handle it.  _ Truth be told, she probably just wanted someone else to do something stupid so she could vent her frustrations at them for the whole mess. Better she wallow privately in her demoralisation for a few moments before she picked up arms again.  _ God, my head hurts. _

Evelyn had followed her, wringing her hands. "Would you let me- I don’t know if I can still…" She raised her hand towards Buffy’s face.

Buffy lifted her eyebrows at her, holding still, and Evelyn brought her hand up to the bruise on her cheek. Coolness, like a trickling infusion of water from a clean alpine stream, soaked through her skin where Evelyn's hand met it. She relaxed into it, feeling the coolness spread as the ghost's palm sank partway through her skin. It looked all kinds of wrong from the corner of her eye, but the graze had been burning with angrily torn flesh, and now it was numbing away. She closed her eye to the weirdness of it. "That works. Thank you."

A moment later Spike came in, carrying the girl from the car. One glance at his face was enough to jolt her to her feet again. He was giving her a look that was neither alarm nor upset nor anger; inscrutable but blazingly intense. "What is it?" she asked.   


He bent to lay the girl on the couch carefully, then gestured down at her, saying nothing.   


Buffy’s eyes travelled from his face to the girl's, and her stomach did a strange little flip-cringe thing. Moving almost hesitantly to stand beside Spike, she looked down at Willow.

The incongruity of it - Willow, here, on her couch - stunned her to silence for a long moment before she tore her eyes away to look at Spike in query.   


He met her with an equally dumbfounded look, then weakly shrugged a hand towards Willow. "It's her. Thought I caught a hint of familiar scent when I went to get her out of the car just now, stopped and looked at her face properly. Didn't notice earlier."

Willow was so filthy, pale and strangely starved-looking that she couldn't be surprised Spike hadn't recognised her sooner; Buffy doubted she'd have known her in the dark right now, even if she'd had time to really look. Were it not for Spike’s confirmation, she'd be doubting herself now.   


"Is she…" Obviously she wasn't  _ okay.   
_

"She's alive," Spike offered, shrugging.   


The front door's lock clicked shut, shaking her from her stupefaction. Tim and Giles were inside. The house was secure, at least for now… Whatever else might be wrong with Willow, she looked cold. Buffy ducked into the bedroom and grabbed the blanket off their bed.   


When she returned to the lounge, Giles was crouched beside the couch, a hand held to Willow’s forehead. She draped the blanket over her carefully and stepped back.   


"You know her?" Tim asked quietly, looking from her to Spike.   


"Yes..." Buffy said. "How long did you say you'd been there?"

"Eleven days. I don’t know where to begin to tha-"

"And she was there when you arrived?" Spike asked.   


"Correct. I replaced her on the summoning circle. I'm-"

"You said the witch had done something to her?" Buffy cut in.

"I don’t know what, I'm sorry. Only, she would wake her a little, make her eat and drink, but I never managed to rouse her."

"She wasn't supposed to be there…" Buffy mused, meeting Spike’s eyes.  _ Was Hiro in on this?   
_

He looked both dubious and cynical.  _ I doubt it, but we hardly know him. _ Everyone had a price, and some people were masters of deception.   


It didn't line up though. He'd pointed them straight to her, apparently unintentionally, only hours after telling them otherwise. Unless… no. She could run in circles on this all night and settle nowhere. Giles stood up and turned to her, and she raised her eyebrows at him.

"I can’t see anything physically wrong with her, at a cursory glance," he said. "We'd need a hospital to be certain, of course. But you said witch?"

"Amy," she told him. "Rat-Amy. Or, was-a-rat-Amy."  _ Must be regular old Sunnydale reunion night. _ Three ghosts had been bad enough; now they had six extra people and an uncomfortably familiar vibe of looming badness over them all.

Giles looked down at Willow again, then appraised the rest of them. "She'll be all right for now. I presume you have tea somewhere?"

She pointed him to the kitchen, and he cautiously took charge, ushering everyone to sit at the table and switching on the kettle.   


Right. Enough with defeat-slumped and blindsided Buffy. Meeting time.

She grabbed a can of coke from the fridge and offered one to Tim; he turned it down and shyly asked for a glass of water instead. Biting back her flood of more complicated questions, she passed him one and asked, "When was the last time you ate? We've got…"  _ Shoot, what do we have?  _ "Frozen lasagna, ice cream, cookies, instant mac and cheese… there's some leftover pizza in the fridge…"

Tim looked ready to start drooling onto the table. "Yesterday. Cold pizza sounds like ambrosia right now," he confessed. "If it wouldn't be any trouble."

"It's not," she said, opening the fridge. "I can microwave it?"   


"That’s fine," he said quickly. Microwaving meant waiting; she knew the feeling. But probably not like he did.

She put the pizza box down in front of him, and one of the chains on his wrists clunked heavily against the edge of the table as he reached for it. "Shit. Sorry, we should get those off first," she said. "I'm out of practice with the whole rescuing-people thing."

"It's fine," he said quickly. "I've dealt with them this long, they can wait until I've answered your questions."

"Okay." Sitting down, she cracked open her can and took a long sip, washing away the aftertaste of gritty roads and dusty basements. Holding the can to her cheek, she met Spike’s eyes across the table and found her own worries echoed;  _ how long until she's on her way here? _ She pursed her lips for a moment. "Amy might come after us," she said, looking around at the others. "Or after Willow. I don’t know how well our barrier will work if she shows up in force; we'd better take it down so you three-" she looked at Marie and Evelyn sitting beside her at the table, David standing behind them at the wall- "can leave."

"I will not," David said. "While you are here, I will stay to fight." He straightened up. "Talk. I shall stand watch for you." He left through the wall.

"It's no safer anywhere else," Evelyn said, shaking her head sadly. "And it would be wrong of us. We're staying."

Buffy nodded. It was their decision. "Marie?" she asked.   


Marie nodded, controlling her fear. "I'll stay."

"Who?" Giles asked, spluttering slightly.

Tim had leaned away from the ghost's side of the table, squinting hard at Evelyn, who was nearest him.

"Oh," Buffy said. "You can’t see them?" She looked from Tim to Giles. "Right. Of course… Giles, Tim - Evelyn, Marie. David just went outside to be lookout. They're our ghost friends."

Evelyn reached across and waved a hand in front of Tim, and he turned his head slightly, still squinting. "I think he can sense something," the ghost said, at the same time as he said, "There's something…"

"Moving on," Buffy said. "Tim, eat your pizza before it's your turn to talk. Giles: Amy. Going large on the necromantic summoning, had Willow in her basement, was using Tim here as a battery, now has the scythe. Fill gaps." She gulped another sip of her drink. "Hiro - some dude with a dragon - told us where to find Amy, and-" she tilted her head, "-actually, he was spot on with the facts there. Also, told us Willow was in fireskin land. Also, may have some healing abilities…"

"Let’s face it," Spike threw in, "wherever he stands, he already knows where we live. May as well contact him."   


"And let him touch Willow?" she challenged.   


He clenched his jaw, glaring. Agreement on the not liking of the idea, then.

"She has your scythe?" Giles asked, setting a cup of tea next to Spike.   


Buffy nodded guiltily. "She put some kind of mojo on it, glued it to the floor. I had to bail without it."

Giles huffed a short sigh. "And she's been calling up ghosts?"

"Yes. She has… I think there were twenty-two left. And she's done something to make them self-sustaining; they eat real ghosts. We'd planned to smash their amulet or magic rock or whatever…" It had been a good plan, hadn't it? Straightforward, sensible.   


"You didn’t know about us?" Tim asked.   


"Not a clue," Spike said.   


"I can’t begin to thank you," Tim started again. "I'd all but given up hope-"

"Thanks accepted. Move on," Spike snapped at him. "The circle?"   


"It's a standard summoning circle. She'd draw the power from inside of me, haul up a ghost, then send them out with the rest. They had until the next summoning to devour enough power to keep going on their own, otherwise they'd fade when she severed the link to make a new one. Took everything she could from me each time… I tried to send a calling, get help, but I didn't have enough accessible power left. As soon as a trickle recovered she'd use it again, and I was getting weaker each time. She wasn't impressed with me; only a couple of the surviving hunters are my doing, and she had to add something of her own to pull them off. The rest of them she took from your friend, and I suspect some of the power she's slinging too… your friend must have been incredibly strong."

Buffy glanced through to the lounge, where Willow lay silently on the couch. "She is."   


"The Amy we knew wouldn't have been capable of draining power like that," Giles said quietly.   


_ She couldn’t even un-rat herself.   
_

"She's not alone. Something else is inside her, working with her," Tim said. "It shows sometimes. Like a possession, but welcomed. Demonic, not ghostly."

_ Big question time.  _ "What's her aim in all this?"   


"Power, as far as I could make out. Enough force to rule any place. Enough to suck the life out of anyone in her way. And, she seemed to be rather keen on personally watching your friend slowly fade."

_ Typical.  _ Power for the sake of it. "What are you?" she asked Tim suddenly. She should have probed him more before they brought him home with them "I mean, we're talking supernatural power here, right?"

"Human," he said quickly. "I have some small skill with séances, listening across dimensions, that sort of thing. Her henchmen grabbed me from my store, Séances-"

"And Summonings," Buffy completed. She glanced at Spike to grant him his  _ told you so, _ but he looked distracted. "Know anything about Ezra's Readings? They've closed too."

"She left, decided it was time for an extended visit to the grandkids. She tried to tell me something was coming, but I thought it would blow over. Stupid."

"If Amy draws power from the scythe, she'll have her unbeatable army," Giles said sternly. "And god knows what it could do to the slayer line… or-" his face darkened, "what she could pull from the girls through it."   


_Well, crap._ _I should never have taken it near her._ "So I get it back. Fast. Tonight. How did you get here?"

"Rental car. But-"

She lifted a hand. "I need to call Wes. Then we throw together a plan of attack." 

  
  


Hanging up the phone, she heard the back door slam shut, followed by the stomp of Spike’s boots on the stairs. She glanced into the lounge and saw Evelyn sitting on the floor next to the couch.   


"I'll be right here," the ghost said. "You do what you need to."   


Smiling a quick thank you, she followed Spike outside.   


Apparently, what she needed to do was engage in a silent argument. Spike was pacing the yard tightly, fingers fidgeting constantly with the end of a lit cigarette. She sat on the bottom step and watched, but within two breaths her own ire had been drawn to the surface, and she stormed up to him, snatched his cigarette, threw it down, and ground it into the grass with her foot. Then fixed him with a furiously defiant glare.

He chuckled darkly, a brief, humourless sound, then pulled the pack from his pocket and stuck another one between his lips.

She stomped that one into the ground too.   


Eyes flashing, he hurled the pack off into the jungle that covered half the yard, then lifted his eyebrows at her and held his empty palms out to the sides.  _ What are you going to do now, huh? _

She stomped her foot down again, feeling ridiculous for it but too fired up to care. Her hands clenched into fists of their own accord, and his eyes flicked to them, then back to her face, his expression sharpening dangerously as he brought his own hands closer to his body. The very air felt charged, ready to spark like Amy had.

"I don’t know what you think I am," he murmured, low and threatening, "but I'd break anyone's neck without a second's hesitation before I'd leave you behind to save them."

_ But you didn't. You trusted me. And you cared for them, unreservedly.  _ His eyes slid away to the grass, tense and conflicted, and her anger fell through her fingers.  _ Oh. Oh, Spike.  _ She took a step forward, needing to close the space between them, but he turned to the side, walling her off.   


"When they caught me," she said slowly, "I thought, _ I should have stuck with Spike _ ."   


They'd tackled her, one slamming into her bodily without the slightest sound of warning, another driving her face into the asphalt, all of them fighting to grasp their own hold of her with their hungry faces bearing hideously eager grins and silent laughter.   


"Then I thought,  _ Spike's trusting you to get out of this _ . So I  _ did _ ," she finished ardently.   


Filled with an incandescent rage at these creatures that dared threaten to snatch her from him after everything they'd been through; twisting and kicking and snarling through her teeth as she tore into them with such sudden viciousness that the whole pack fell back.   


She moved in front of him again and whispered, "Look at me." He did, still wary, but calming. She held the memory of that ferocious defiance and bound it to her words, "Nothing’s taking me from you. I won't let it. Hear me?"

He inhaled a soft breath and let it out through his lips, calmness settling further. "Yeah," he murmured.   


"But I'm glad you came back," she admitted.   


"Course I came back," he said quickly, twitching.   


"I know. I'm glad." He got it then, and answered her soft smile. "And I know exactly what you are," she said. "You're the guy who safely stole two hostages away from an evil witch  _ and _ an army of ghosts and  _ still _ had time to pick me up. You're Spike."

She reached for his cheek, but he half turned his face away, dropping his gaze to the grass again; ashamed. She moved her body closer instead, and he settled one hand on her hip softly, like an anchor. She waited.   


"You put too much faith in me," he said quietly. "Think I might've killed that guy."

"Which guy?" she asked gently.

"One of her mind-controlled lackeys. Blocked the door. I don’t know, I hit him with the flat side, but…" he shook his head, letting out a short sigh and running his free hand through his hair.   


She nodded and pulled him against her, nudging until his other arm came around her too and his cheek rested sadly against her hair, accepting comfort. "No I don't," she whispered, hugging him tighter.  


  
  



	9. Arrangements

 

 

 

**** x  
  


Certainty. It sunk into his bones slowly, holding her and being held in this pocket of seclusion where backyard and wilds blended. They would stop the witch. They would retrieve the scythe. They would heal Willow. Then they would take their ghosts out for dinner.   


He pressed his lips to the top of her head before letting her go, doubling the feeling back over to her. Then squinted into the jungle and started searching for his pack of cigarettes. The dry, woody scent of them stood out sharply against the damper living scents of things growing and decaying in this humid and shadowy place, and before long he was pulling them from the undergrowth.   


“ _ Spike _ ,” she whispered behind him; less than whispered, really.

He stepped back towards her, half an eye on her face and the rest scanning their surroundings. Buffy was looking out past the end of their property, alert but not quite alarmed, still and watchful. He listened hard, scanning the night sounds of water and insects and tiny creatures for a discordant note and finding nothing. He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Look,” she mouthed.

The air was always a visible entity back here, moisture in the warmer layers from the street condensing into a haze of misty fog where it hit the cooler atmosphere of the swamp. It grew thinner or milkier with changes in the weather, hung lower or higher over the ground at different times, obscured and offered shelter. He peered through it now, watching for movement, for shapes beyond the tangled, twisting forms of branches and vines, eyes distracted by the motion of the fog itself, swirling and eddying unusually.  _ Oh. _ She was watching the fog.   


With a shift in perception - the difference between studying the reflection in a mirror, and the inner surface of the glass itself - some shape of the thing became clear. It was less a clear space in the mist than a change in the current of a part of it, a section of air moving separately from the rest. It was huge, as tall as their heads, longer than he could make out, but the size of it seemed to shift, rippling with the fog rolling in towards where it seemed to be then swirling away again.  _ Tatsu.  _ Had to be.   


Feeling through his pocket, he slowly took out his lighter and lit a cigarette, then stepped closer to the rotting posts marking the border of their property. He took a long drag, then blew smoke carefully at the nearest portion of the thing. A yard past the fenceline, the smoke came up against something, faintly outlining a curving line of a massive body for a second. Then the smoke swirled into nothing, dispersing in the air as the creature spun cloud through the mist and vanished with a breath of wind.

"Tatsu?" Buffy asked.   


"Reckon so."

"You saw it?" David's voice called.   


He turned in time to see the ghost spring down from where he'd been standing on the house's roof. "Yeah. Sort of."

"I'm sorry, I only noticed it when you did," David apologised. "It looked like the air."

Buffy nodded, biting her lip, then traded a look with Spike.

“Keep watching,” Spike told David. “You’re doing a great job. We’ve gotta pop out.”

 

-  


 

Lalia stood waiting in front of her closed door, a sombre expression on her face. They stopped on the footpath, limbs loose, hoping for an answer that would clear the suspicion but ready to act swiftly if it wasn’t forthcoming.   


“Hiro’s already here,” Lalia said plainly. “He tells me something’s put your backs up, beyond the obvious.”

“The obvious being?” Spike asked.

“Boy,” she said, shaking her head. “Your car is trashed, Buffy’s got road on her face, you’ve come without the scythe, and you both look more dangerous than I’ve ever seen you. It didn’t go well.”

No point denying it. “Not entirely.”

"I'd think you’re in need of help then, not a messenger to shoot."

Lalia was worried, he suddenly realised; covering well, but genuinely threatened by them. It was reassuring. "Look, we just need a word with him," Spike said. "Face to face."

Lalia studied him for a long moment. "All right," she sighed, then swung open the door behind her and called for him without turning.

Hiro appeared in the hall, cloakless and anxious-looking. He stopped just inside the door and asked, "What happened?"

"At the witch's house," Buffy said carefully, "we found Willow."   


Confusion spread across Hiro’s features; harder to accurately fake than outrage. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that when you told us she was in another dimension, she was being held prisoner thirty minutes away."

"That can't be right," Hiro said, shaking his head. "If she were here the tatsu  _ would _ have known. It must be a glamour of some kind."

Which was a rather chilling suggestion. Buffy shifted her balance slightly.   


"What has she told you to do?" Hiro asked. "You haven't taken her advice, have you?" He was outside now, leaning to look down the road towards their house, forgetting his fear of them in the urgency of a possible larger concern.

"Nothing," Spike told him. "She's unconscious."

Hiro looked at him sharply. "Unconscious? Or travelling? Ah, not actually here?"

_ Bingo. _   


"She's on our couch…" Buffy said.   


"Let me examine her," Hiro said quickly. Then caught himself with a twitch and added, "If, um, I mean, can I?"   


Buffy dropped her shoulders, easing back the aggression.   


"Yeah," Spike said. "Think you'd better."

Lalia pulled the front door shut and made to follow Hiro down the stairs. "What?" she asked when he gave her a look. "You're not leaving me out of this. Rumours that are going around, I expect to hear what's really happened."

  
  


Lalia paused for a split-second when she saw Willow, clamping down whatever her face might have revealed before Spike could catch it, then stood in the back corner to observe.   


Tim was sound asleep in an armchair; hadn't made it to the shower. Hardly surprising given the way his hands had started trembling with fatigue after Spike hacksawed off the manacles. The excitement of being rescued could only carry him so far, and he must have been run down long past exhaustion. Spike shook him awake and steered him to the spare room, where he immediately curled up on top of the bed and started snoring.   


When he came back to the living room, Buffy had claimed Tim's chair to watch as Hiro settled cross-legged on the floor and closed his eyes, meditating. He let a flicker of a smirk show for her; of course she just happened to have chosen the seat right behind Hiro that had her favourite shortsword stashed down the back of it. She pointed at Hiro with her eyes and mouthed a stern,  _ shh.   
_

Spike raised his hands placatingly and backed into the kitchen. His tea was still waiting on the table, cooling slowly on this hot early-autumn night, and he sat down with it.

Giles stood leaning against the bench again, ears pricked curiously to the living room.   


"Hiro," Spike explained quietly. "And Lalia."

He nodded, the gesture partly thanking, partly an attempt to say that of course he'd known, and partly just awkwardness.   


"Why are you here?" Spike whispered.   


Giles stiffened, then caught the curiosity in his tone and relaxed again. "Xander told me you were going after her tonight, and- I hadn't planned to; haven't even bought anything useful, I'm afraid. I just… felt I should be here for- you both. So I hopped on a plane," he whispered back.   


_ Too late  _ was on the tip of his tongue, acidic and sharp and with a further volley of words behind it. He bit down on them and lifted his mug. "Least you make a decent cup of tea."

"Yes, well, I suppose you can hardly conquer an empire without that."

  
  


**** +  
  


"She's not here," Hiro announced, sitting down next to Lalia at the table. "Not her essence. This is just her physical shell. I would assume she's still in Fyrskein."

"Well, tell her to get back here," Buffy said shortly.  _ And not to be so careless next time. People should stay in their bodies where they belong.   
_

"It's not quite that simple," Hiro said cautiously.   


"Fyrskein; the realm of inner dreams?" Giles asked. He looked grave; grave Giles was no good.   


"Yes. You know of it?" Hiro asked.   


"Not in detail," Giles said.   


"Willow didn't leave her… solid self behind though when she left, did she?" Buffy asked Giles. "You told me she opened a door and walked through."  _ So did Xander.   
_

Giles nodded quickly. "She did."

"So how did Amy get her?"

Hiro spoke up, darting quick glances around the table and obviously wary of drawing accusations his way. "The tatsu traced all of her to the border. This Amy must have taken her body from beyond there. But to manage that… how close were they?" Off her sharp look, he added, "It's not something that could be done without a close personal connection."

Buffy blew a breath out between her lips. "Amy got herself stuck as a rat for years. Willow looked after her, and eventually undid it. After that… the last time we encountered her, Amy put a curse on Willow." They never had talked about it properly. There'd been the girls everywhere, and then the suspicious principal and the hellmouth firing up and  _ everything _ had been put on hold while they dealt with the looming apocalypse and then… Pang.  _ How did we get so far apart?   
_

"Tim said Amy had woken her up, fed her," Spike said.   


Hiro pondered that. "She may have dreamt it."

"From dreamland?" Spike asked dubiously.   


"Yes. If she were to sleep there, it would be possible to draw a dream back to her body briefly."

"So we just have to get her to dream reality, and she'll wake up?"   


"No," he said sadly. "Well, she'd stir a little. But she'll not come back to herself that way; you'll never get all of her here at once. If dreams could become our reality, we'd be lost to this one the moment we first fell asleep."

"Why don't ghosts dream?" she asked. There'd been moments when she'd felt she could fall asleep, perhaps, but the idea had been accompanied by an unnamed fear of somehow drifting into the unknown.   


"They don't?" Hiro asked. "No, I guess they wouldn't. They're already straddling a border; letting parts of themselves wander could fragment them permanently."

_ Shudder _ . "So how do we get her back?"

"I don't know that you-"

" _ Do not _ finish that sentence," Buffy growled. "How?"

He sighed. "You'd have to find someone who can travel to Fyrskein and search for her. It wouldn't be easy; getting there at all is difficult, and very dangerous, let alone finding her inside it. But you have some time. Her body is weak, but if you can put her in the care of a good healer…"

"Right," Buffy said, standing. This information, she knew what to do with. She checked the clock; it was already half past midnight. Time to pick up the pace. "Battle plans," she said, jabbing a finger at the map. "Start them." Then she went to phone Wes again.   


Fred answered before the first ring had ended and began relaying information rapid-fire. She and Wes would be in the air in fifteen minutes; now that they knew what their task was when they got here, she'd start finding a way to commander a specialist from the clinic in London.   


" _ Wait for us _ ," Fred said firmly. "We're coming armed. Be with you by three-thirty."

Three hours. "Okay-" she said, but Fred had already hung up.

"Four o'clock, we do this," she told the others when she returned to the kitchen. The room looked too small tonight, almost foreign with its changing multitude of people.   


Spike nodded his agreement. Delaying any longer would only let Amy strengthen her army more than she might already have. Besides, they did their best work off the bat.

Marie stepped forward from the back of the room. "I'll swap with David. I'm no use to you for planning a fight, but I've got eyes."

"Thank you," Buffy said honestly. The poor woman was looking increasingly out of her depth, but she was holding it together well. "Okay. Giles. What do we know about the thing possessing Amy? Can we make it a weak spot?"

Spike narrowed his eyes at Lalia. "Ms  _ 'I can offer you an exorcism', _ " he said in a fair imitation of her accent. "You have anything to back that threat up?"   


Lalia bristled. "Watch it, boy," she grumbled, then turned her attention to Giles.

"Oh," he said. "Ah…"

"Unholy demon alliances," Buffy prompted. "Ones that boost the magics. Eyghon's school buddies. Lecture."

"There are thousands of possibilities," Giles began. "Corporeal demons whose nature is to live like parasites in a living body. Spirit demons who have to be summoned here and invited in. Demons who have lost their corporeal form and latched onto another's body with malicious-" Buffy coughed pointedly. "Or benign intents," he quickly amended. "Considering her words, and that she appeared to still be the Amy that we knew, to some degree - and her wish to retain hold of Willow does seem to support that - I would think it most likely this is something she has summoned and welcomed into her body, in return for greater power. If we  _ were _ able to exorcise it, it's highly likely that would disrupt her magic, perhaps catastrophically."   


"Very proper, aren't you, council-man?" Lalia said, snickering. "Heard your kind were extinct, yet here you are, like the last unicorn." Ignoring his offended expression, she turned back to Spike. "I'll do your exorcism. But only because you two have made one hell of a problem tonight; I've got no need to prove anything."   


Spike gave her a sly look, and she nodded at him, seemingly pleased.

"Thank you," Buffy said. "And, sorry. About biggering the problem."

She shrugged. "Nothing wrong with making a mess occasionally, long as you clean it up. I'll need to come with you, see her in person. It won't take long. Seconds."

"Okay," Buffy said. "That’s Amy sorted. What are we doing about the ghosts? I mean, if we're somehow able to get close enough to take down Amy, are they going to keep attacking without her?"   


"If they don’t vanish with the exorcism… They'll be uncontrolled. And probably just as violent and hungry, only without a single direction," Giles said. "I doubt she's calling them from somewhere they'd be keen to return to, given your description of them."

Buffy and Spike both looked at Lalia.

"I  _ can _ send them back," she said. "But it would be a slow, one-at-a-time thing."   


"So we send them back ourselves. Tearing the head off one seemed to work after I lost the scythe."

Spike arched an eyebrow at her; she must have forgotten to mention that part. Then he smiled one of those smiles that made the edges of his eyes crinkle adorably, and she grinned back.   


"I will come with you," David said. "I can help fight."

"You didn’t make it halfway there, Mr vague," Spike told him. "Appreciate the offer, though."   


"No. You shall take me," he insisted. "I wish it. I will show you where I am."

"Where…"  _ Oh.  _ She felt her nose crinkle in distaste. “It’ll be dangerous,” she said. “And we won’t be able to cover you.”

“I understand,” he said.   


She sighed, relenting. “David wants to come,” she explained to the others. “I guess we’ll swing by the cemetery and… get him.”

“I can’t say the same,” Hiro said apologetically. “If they caught the tatsu…”

“That’s fine,” she said. “I don’t want to take anyone who can’t see what’s attacking them.”

“I’m coming,” Giles said.   


“I don’t want to take anyone who can’t see what’s attacking them,” she repeated. “Unless you can come up with a way around that in the next three hours…”

He pursed his lips unhappily. "I can’t just sit here. And you can't just go running back into a fight you lost little more than an hour ago with nothing but a ghost and an exorcist to tip the scales. Amy could have increased her protection significantly already," he finished in a tone of admonishment.

"Got a better idea?" she asked him. "Maybe we wait until she's ready to come and attack us instead?" She turned to Spike and said, "Let’s go get David."

  
  


They found his name eventually, on a small, sealed door at ground level in the wall of tombs.  _ David Markson.  _ Dates, a logo for the fisherman's union. It hit her then - David was  _ dead _ . Dead and buried half a century ago by the people he'd known in life. Part of her felt they should say something, find some flowers. But, he was still in his grave, yet walking around too. "Why?" she asked, of Spike and herself.   


Spike shrugged one shoulder. "Ask him."

Maybe. She handed Spike her dagger, and he started prying the door open while she kept an eye out for anyone who might be passing through the dank back corner of the cemetery after midnight. Grave robbing, not her favourite look.

"Don't think we're going to need that sack," Spike said, peering into the vault cavity a minute later.

She bent down to see what he'd found, flicking on her torch. The high water table in the city vetoed underground burial as an option, so the cemeteries here were all raised mausoleums, imposing decorative tombs, and these walls - almost a compressed, stone version of the drawers in a morgue, eerily oven-like doors all shouldered together on their faces. Behind the doors were long, narrow spaces, often holding the remains of six or seven people. David's only bore the one name on its front, so at least they wouldn't have to worry about picking up the wrong person's bones. But that wasn't going to be a problem. The vault was empty.   


Damp, miasmic air hung like a presence inside of it, making her long for the dry crunchy leaves and fine dust of Sunnydale's crypts. The stone bottom of the chamber disappeared into the dirt, muddy and slimy and probably home to all kinds of wriggling things. It was narrow, dark, and the weight of the six vaults above it seemed to loom down ominously on its ceiling.  _ Please don't say I have to go inside. _ She stood up again. "He's not here."

"It'll be the humidity; breaks down bones in no time. Probably why he's on his own down here. You'll have to feel around the bottom, see if you can find some of the larger bits left. Check where his femurs would be."

She took a step back. "I am  _ not  _ going in there."

"Sure you are. You're smaller."   


She gave him an obstinate look. "There's bugs. Leechey things. They'll slime up my arms and steal my blood with their evil little mouths."   


"I'll hold your ankle," he offered. "Make sure nothing drags you…" he trailed off, seeing through her bug complaint to the bigger reason. With a resigned sigh and gentle smile he started taking off his coat.   


"I know it’s silly," she mumbled.   


He dropped his coat over her shoulders and kissed her on the tip of her nose. "Never. You keep this clean."

"Want me to hold your ankle?"   


"Okay," he said, grinning. "But don't tell anyone."

  
  


**** x  
  


After a careful search, he came up with a small handful of human teeth, one of which was filled with amalgam. Would the metal count as a representative piece of a physical body after the rest was gone? Probably something someone should be looking into. With the batteries dumped out the torch made a reasonable jar, and he packed some of the dirt that had been around them into it too. Hopefully it would be enough.

Back at home, they called David into the bedroom to show him what they'd found in private.   


The ghost looked down the small torch sadly for a moment, then nodded. "Aye. This feels like me. Like what I should return to."

"I'll find a better jar," Buffy said apologetically, glancing around the - still very bare - room.

"No," David said, shaking his head. "I like this. It is practical. A respectable object. Unless you require it back tonight?"

"Think we can manage without it," Spike said, schooling his face into the same gravity David's wore.   


"This is good," David said. "Thank you." With a nod he stepped out through the door, leaving them alone.

Spike closed the distance between himself and Buffy, then traced the edge of the graze on her cheek with a featherlight finger. It'd been drawing his eyes all night; the raw redness of it making him want to wince and take care of it, her utter lack of concern for it reassuring in some deep, steadying way. An army had slammed her into the concrete, and she'd proved just as unyielding beneath the skin. And the skin would soon heal.

"We should have a shower," he murmured. "Put some nice, cool water on this, and on that bruise."

"I suppose we can hardly go over there looking like this," she mused. "Grass in my hair, slime on your knees, it'd give the wrong impression."

"I think I like you with grass in your hair. Usually says we've been having fun," he said, only half teasing.   


She grinned and flicked her eyes heavenward. "I'll meet you in there," she promised, then ducked from the room.

He heard Giles collar her in the living room, and paused to listen.   


"I'm sorry, Buffy," the watcher said. "I didn't come to argue with you, or to try to tell you how to do things. And you're right, of course. I just hate to see you in danger again."

"You could come and see me when I'm  _ not _ in danger," she said, her voice light in that flippant way that would let her shrug off a hurtful response. "Last week was much less exciting."

"Yes, well, it's hard to get away…" Giles said, then sighed. "No, that's not entirely correct. In truth, I haven't wanted to intrude."

"I think you can rely on Spike to let you know if that's happening," she said, warmer this time.   


"Yes, I imagine I can," Giles said dryly, but without rancour. "I'll need to get back to my desk as soon as this is sorted - I didn't make any arrangements to be away - but perhaps I could return soon?"   


"That'd be nice," Buffy said softly. The TV switched on. "For the ghosts," she said. "I'm just going to clean up."

If Giles suspected, he was polite enough not to say anything.   


She slipped into the bathroom as Spike turned on the shower, and listened for a moment after closing the door.  _ "I can still hear the TV," _ she whispered.   


He threw a towel at the bottom of the door, then crouched down to tuck it in against the gap carefully. Sound from the living room was muted. When he turned back to her she was naked, bending over the sink to study herself in the mirror, arching her back provocatively and with a devious little smirk playing at the edge of her lips.  _ Someone wants to play. _ He started undoing his belt, watching her face in the mirror; the way her smirk melted into something hungrier at the jangle of his belt buckle, the path of the little pink tip of her tongue across her lip.   


Turning to him, she held her palm up;  _ Stop. Wait there _ . Then pressed a finger to her lips;  _ shh _ .   


_ Alright.  _ He leaned back against the wall, hooking his thumbs into his pockets and lifting an eyebrow at her.   


She stepped into the shower, leaving the door open, and shook her hair back off her shoulders. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head back and let the water cascade over her golden skin, features softening with pleasure at the sensation.   


He shifted slightly, drawing in a deep, slow breath that filled his lungs with the warm scent of her arousal.   


She opened her eyes and faux-glared at him, whispering, " _ Stay there. I need to actually get clean." _   


Nodding innocently, he whispered back, " _ You do that." _ She was glorious when she took charge.   


Tilting the showerhead to spray down her back, she massaged shampoo into her hair, then swept the thick lather down her neck and around the curve of one breast in a slow, languid glide. Cupping her breast, she kneaded it gently and teased her thumb around her nipple, letting her eyes drift closed again.   


His fingers clenched against his thighs, aching to reach for her, to slide around to the small of her back and draw circles on her skin there as his mouth covered that pebbling nipple. The denim of his still-buttoned jeans pressed hard against his swelling cock, the rough, cold fabric only accentuating the warmth and satin of her skin so tantalisingly close.

Sneaking a peek at him through lowered eyes, she trailed her other hand up to cup her second breast, teasing her thumbs over her nipples in unison.   


A purry growl rumbled in his chest, and he splayed his fingers over the rock-hard bulge in his pants, adding to the feeling of restriction. God, she knew how to own him.

She suppressed most of a wicked little smile, then whispered, " _ Take your shirt off. Slowly." _   


He obeyed, peeling it off over his head and dropping it to the floor, smirking at the way her eyes gleamed with appreciation. He reached for the top button of his jeans, but she shook her head slightly. He hooked his thumbs through his belt loops instead, trying to hold on to his swagger when he was filled with the urge to get down on his knees and beg her to let him pleasure her.

Watching his face, she trailed one hand down her stomach, skimming over her downy curls, sliding between her thighs, stroking lightly as she edged her way closer to her labia.   


His breath hitched, caught between the impulse to touch her, to watch her touch herself, or to watch her tease them both forever with almost-touching.   


She lifted one knee and braced it against the shower wall, then slid a finger down between her outer lips, her own breath catching slightly. " _ Unbutton them, _ " she murmured, looking at his crotch. " _ Touch yourself. _ "

Undoing the buttons on his jeans, he wrapped a hand around his aching cock as it leapt towards her, rolling his fingers around the base and imagining guiding it beneath her hand, against her skin, into the glistening throbbing heat of her. A bead of precum swelled up on the tip, drawing her eyes, stilling her hand momentarily. Licking her lips unconsciously, she looked back to his face and slid her fingers down herself again, spreading her legs further to show him everything as she started stroking in a slow, light rhythm.   


He opened his mouth - to plead, to swear, to murmur adorations, he wasn't sure - but she shook her head again, chest fluttering with quickening breath. God, she was going to bring herself off in front of him with her eyes locked on his, soft and heavy with love, showing him exactly what was driving her arousal.  _ This is how you make me feel. Watch _ .   


He stroked himself slowly, hand almost trembling as he fought the urge to pump faster, harder, ready to burst already, watching her face as her breath became short little pants and the pace of her fingers increased, one finger thrusting inside of herself and the heel of her palm grinding against her clit.

" _ Fuck _ ," she whispered, closing her eyes for a second before snapping them back to his face. Her free hand grabbed onto the hook on the wall behind her, gripping tightly as she thrust harder against her palm. " _ Spike, fuck…" _ Shuddering, clenching, eyes rolling back in her head, she came with a breathless moan of his name.   


He couldn't hold off any longer, smacking his head back against the wall as he surrendered and thrust into his hand, once, twice, groaning her name as cum splurted out onto his chest and he watched her writhe and tremble through her orgasm in front of him.

She pulled herself up straighter, still clinging to the hook, and slid her hand away slowly, almost blushing now at her brazenness.   


His legs felt ready to drop him to the floor, like she'd shaken him to pieces with a softly moaned word. "Christ, luv," he breathed, before she could get any shyer. "God, I love you."

She smiled, coy and proud, then moved over. "You're messy now. Get in here."

  
  


"Fred and Wes will be here soon," Buffy mumbled, all melted against him as they basked in the afterglow again. "We'd better get out."

He turned her face up to his for a final soft shower-sprinkled kiss, then switched the water off. "Yeah. Think we might have been in here a while."

She grinned, blushing adorably, and eyed the inch of water on the bathroom floor. Holding onto his wrist, she stretched out like an acrobat to nab the towels off the rail on the wall.

  
  


**** +  
  


Fred and Wesley brought weapons, but nothing especially formulated to fight ghosts. They had, however, brought plenty of sedatives to restrain a human witch.   


Giles took Wes aside as soon as he arrived, and after a quick discussion they tabled a suggestion - the two of them would come to Amy's and cast a barrier spell around the house, trapping the hunters in (or out) and giving the rest of them an immediate safe space. Except for David.   


"That… is a brilliant idea," Buffy said, a smile growing as she imagined it. Then falling. "Except, there's no way Amy and her gang are going to sit there and watch calmly while you walk a circle around her house. You'll never get it done."

"So we drive it," Spike said. "Circle the block."

She looked at Wes.

"That’s a rather large diameter to cover," he said cautiously, looking at Giles in question. "But we could certainly give it a go."

"Good. But if it doesn't work, you'll have to pull back once we go in. Flee, or park in the cemetery down the street." She pointed it out on the map. "Spike took care of the fence."

Giles nodded his agreement.   


Fred and Hiro would stay with Willow. David's torch would stay in the glove box; the ghost himself with Wes and Giles.   


"Okay," she said, looking around at them all. "Time to catch our rat."

  
  
  
  



End file.
